CERN Takes a Bow at the Montreux Jazz Festival

A year after CERN announced the discovery of a Higgs boson on the world stage, several of the participating scientists found themselves in a new and unfamiliar arena – the renowned Montreux Jazz Festival.

 

The Canettes Blues Band of the CERN Music Club performing live on the Music In The Park stage at the Montreux Jazz Festival, on 18 July.

CERN and the Montreux Jazz Foundation teamed up this summer to host a series of seminars and performances titled “The Physics of Music and the Music of Physics”.  The seminars took place in the historic Petit Palais and included a variety of presentations on the interplay between science and sound.

Sound artist Bill Fontana kicked off the series by presenting the concepts and methods behind the creation of  “sound sculptures”.  As the current Collide@CERN artist-in-residence, Fontana has been placing microphones and sensors on accelerators, detectors and other objects at CERN to listen in on the rich sounds of our world of physics.

Mark Lewney, a scientist with a PhD in Guitar Acoustics, gave a dynamic and musical presentation entitled “Rock Guitar in 11 Dimensions”. A capacity audience enjoyed participating in demonstrations that included vibrating springs, tossed bricks and a variety of musical riffs from Vivaldi to AC/DC, to present concepts ranging from acoustics to string theory.

ATLAS physicist Lily Asquith presents the LHC Sound project, which maps sounds qualities to the physical parameters of real Higgs candidate events, to an enthusiastic audience.

LHC physicists Lily Asquith (ATLAS) and Piotr Traczyk (CMS) completed the seminar sessions, using music and sound as methods to describe and celebrate the hunt for and discovery of the Higgs boson.

Asquith presented LHC Sound, a project that “sonifies” ATLAS Higgs candidate events by mapping physical parameters of each event to sound qualities, making it possible to “hear” various aspects of the data. Traczyk played his famous guitar, featuring a jigsaw puzzle image of the CMS detector, and used puzzle parts and playing cards to demonstrate the challenge of finding a Higgs boson, as well as the significance of its discovery to the world.

A guitar duet of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Traczyk and Lewney was met with delighted laughter and applause and brought the seminars to a humorous and celebratory end.

The Funky Associates band takes a bow after a successful performance on the Music In The Park stage.

CERN’s popularity at the festival became evident later in the afternoon, as large crowds gathered at the Music In The Park stage next to the famous Stravinsky Auditorium to cheer on the CERN bands. The Funky Associates (Jazz Club) and the Canettes Blues Band (Music Club) performed to a full house – well, field – surprising the audience with their musical talent and showmanship, and receiving invitations from the announcers to return next year.

Event organisers Ariane Koek (CERN Cultural Specialist) and Steven Goldfarb (ATLAS Outreach Coordinator) were thrilled by the outcome of the event, especially the very warm and enthusiastic reception of the Montreux audiences, and look forward to fostering a long-term relationship with the Montreux Jazz Festival.

by CERN Bulletin