{"id":21421,"date":"2024-08-20T09:25:35","date_gmt":"2024-08-20T14:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/?page_id=21421"},"modified":"2026-03-25T13:08:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T18:08:52","slug":"guest-composer-at-fermilab","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/guest-composer-at-fermilab\/","title":{"rendered":"Guest Composer at Fermilab"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Isaac Smith 2026<\/h2>\n
Isaac Smith has been inspired by the sciences throughout his career. He has composed pieces about the landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the confluence of two rivers, and Earth’s troposphere.\u00a0 His dissertation, A Psalm of Spark and Seed<\/b>, imagines a future in which technological innovation and ecological stewardship work together to combat climate change and build a brighter future for humanity.<\/div>\n
His work with Fermilab will explore the invisible world of particle physics. \u201cNo human has seen a neutrino or a proton,\u201d said Smith. \u201cWe detect the remnants or traces of these things. Music lets you dig into the emotional or spiritual content of that abstraction.”<\/div>\n
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Read more about Isaac Smith in the Fermilab News announcement here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Past Guest Composers<\/h2>\n
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Amy Nam 2025<\/h2>\n

The music of Amy<\/span> Nam<\/span>, adjunct faculty in composition and harp at Luther College, draws inspiration from the physical world. Through her work as composer and performer, Nam<\/span> contributes to the ever-evolving dialog between science and art.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled for the opportunity to learn up-close from the work being done at Fermilab,\u201d she says. \u201cThrough my creative work I aim to expand my listeners\u2019 imaginations, nourish their curiosity, and share with them my sense of wonder about the deepest mysteries of reality\u2014the same mysteries lying at the heart of the work being done at Fermilab.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Read more about Amy Nam in the Fermilab News announcement here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Join us May 29, 2026 in Ramsey Auditorium 12:30-1:30pm for the premier of The Harp inside Schrodinger’s Box by Amy Nam.<\/strong><\/h5>\n

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Mischa Zupko 2024<\/h3>\n

Mischa Zupko, adjunct faculty member of the School of Music at DePaul University, will collaborate with Fermilab scientists and members of the Chicago-based Civitas Ensemble to create music based on scientific models in particle science.<\/p>\n

Zupko is a third-generation composer. Zupko draws inspiration from themes of the universe, cosmic phenomena and mathematical models. \u201cFrom what I have come to understand, the ability to imagine, in a physical sense, phenomena relating to the behavior and interaction of elementary particles is impossible, but the attempt to imagine, is where the beauty lies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Read more about Mischa Zupko in the Fermilab News announcement here.<\/a><\/p>\n

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Roger Zare 2023<\/h3>\n

Roger Zare, creates compositions for full orchestras, wind ensembles and single instruments, while serving as a visiting assistant professor of music at the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love the mind-blowing nature of what science is \u2013 where it is able to describe things that we\u2019re almost unable to touch ourselves and explain things in the universe,\u201d said Zare.<\/p>\n

A piano solo, Quantum Field<\/strong>, premiered at the Beyond the Visible exhibition at Schingoethe Center Museum in February 2024.In May 2024 the Batavia Wind Symphony premiered Zare’s Deep Underground<\/strong> composition that went on to be performed by a consortium of high school, university, and community groups across the nation in 2024-2025.<\/p>\n

Roger Zare’s Deep Underground<\/strong> composition is featured in Scoring Particles and Expanding Outreach<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Suzie Shrubb 2022<\/h3>\n

Suzie\u00a0Shrubb is a composer as well as a classical and improvising musician who plays the piano and the oboe. They currently work with the Hurly Burly Theatre in the UK.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like a musical space is a context through which we can take these particle physics systems that are a description of a reality and then translate them. It\u2019s an expression and a relationship,\u201d said Shrubb.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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David Biedenbender 2021<\/h3>\n

David\u00a0Biedenbender, a Michigan State University professor of composition, has experience with the intersection of physics and music. He created a choral work, Flux<\/strong>, to sonify that concept, also known as rate of flow. His composition Cyclotron<\/strong> is\u00a0inspired by the particle accelerator at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at MSU.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hope is to use music to help those who may not know much about the subatomic world learn about and reflect on some of the amazing phenomena, questions and experiments that happen at Fermilab,\u201d Biedenbender said.<\/p>\n

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David Ibbett 2020<\/h3>\n

David Ibbett was the first guest composer at Fermilab. He\u00a0is a composer, educator and musical advocate for science. He<\/span><\/span> composes electrosymphonic music: a fusion of classical and electronic styles and musical strands met with inspiration from the work of scientists: sonified data, musical metaphors for scientific concepts, and experimental sound and images from research.<\/p>\n

Ibbett explains why he was drawn to the ubiquitous and strange particles known as neutrinos. \u201cThey don\u2019t quite fit,\u201d Ibbett said. \u201cThey have mass, but they shouldn\u2019t, according to the Standard Model, and this raises all sorts of questions and opportunities to take our physics understanding further.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Isaac Smith 2026 Isaac Smith has been inspired by the sciences throughout his career. He has composed pieces about the landing of the Huygens probe on Titan, the confluence of two rivers, and Earth’s troposphere.\u00a0 His dissertation, A Psalm of Spark and Seed, imagines a future in which technological innovation and ecological stewardship work together… More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":85,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21421","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/85"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21421"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23641,"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/21421\/revisions\/23641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/events.fnal.gov\/art-gallery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}