Cosmosis: combining the art of music with the inquiry of science

In Cosmosis, the final 2013 SOAC FOCUS Series Event, musicians and scientists explore how failure can empower us to pursue knowledge and success.

The three-part event will take place in Lagerquist Concert Hall in the Mary Baker Russell Music Center on Saturday, May 11, 2013 at 8 pm. The first part will feature works by Jonathan Newman, Beethoven and John Mackey. The second part presents Cosmosis by Susan Botti, and will use projected images on the walls next to the glorious Gottfried and Mary Fuchs organ in Lagerquist Concert Hall. To conclude the event, the audience is invited outside to enjoy a musically inspired science lab with PLU science professors Brett Underwood and Justin Lytle.

Cosmosis composer Susan Botti will make a special appearance as vocal soloist, performing with PLU’s University Wind Ensemble and University Singers, directed by Edwin Powell and Brian Galante.

Cosmosis was inspired by the work of American poet, May Swenson. Her poem The Cross Spider is a response to the news of a Skylab experiment, a project seeing whether a spider, named Arabella, could spin a web in space. Her shape poem, Overboard (a play of gravity) serves as a prelude, which plays with musical equivalents of gravitational force following the shapes laid out in the poem. The spider succeeds in spinning a web on The First Night. A musical interlude follows, reflecting on the vastness of space as well as this heroic undertaking. In The Second Night, the spider succeeds again, but is sacrificed in the process.

Tickets are $8 general admission, $5 senior citizens (55+), $3 alumni, free 18 and under. Tickets available through the PLU Box Office at 253-535-7411.