ASPEN MUSIC EVENT WITH JOSHUA BELL & EDGAR MEYER -- WHAT IS A DOUBLE BASS?

Edgar Meyer (Photo credit: judy h)

On Friday, 7/13/2012, I attended my first Aspen Music Festival event of this summer season. The Aspen Chamber Symphony, conducted by Robert Spano and joined by guest artists Susanna Philips(vocalist – soprano), Joshua Bell (violin) and Edgar Meyer (double bass), performed three works reflecting the Aspen Music Festival’s summer  2012 theme, “Made in America”.

According to the Aspen Music Festival, this theme:

 “…features the music of three groups of recognized and much-beloved composers: the current musical luminaries on the North American scene; émigré composers who created significant music in America, from Rachmaninoff and Stravinsky to Hindemith, Bloch, and Bartok; and the entire school of American composers who studied in Europe and returned to establish a truly American school, including MacDowell, Chadwick, Copland, Antheil, Rorem, and many others…”

July 13, 2012, Aspen Music Festival Featured Works

 

“Knoxville Summer of 1915 .op 24” by Samuel Barber

“Concerto for Violin and Double Bass” by Edgar Meyer

“Symphony No. 4 in D minor, op 120” by Robert Schumann

ASPEN CENTER FOR PHYSICS – HIGGS BOSON? WHY SHOULD I CARE?

PhotonQ-Closing In to Higgs Boson (Photo credit: PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE)

Unhappy with your weight? Blame it on the Higgs Boson.

On June 6, 2012, at a “news conference” event held at the Aspen Center for Physics, Michigan State University professor, Elizabeth Simmons made that comment while announcing that physicists at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics run by CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research ) have finally found experimental evidence of  the existence of the long-sought elementary subatomic particle, the Higgs Boson.

The timing of this momentous discovery and its official announcement was serendipitous for the Aspen Center for Physics which is celebrating its 50^th anniversary this summer. For the last 50 years, physicists from around the world have gathered in Aspen to discuss theoretical physics to increase their understanding of it and to disseminate this information to the public. 

Just last February, Rolf Heuer, Director General, CERN (LHC), spoke about this very Higgs Boson at one of the Maggie and Nick DeWolf 2012 Winter Physics Lectures in Aspen. In the “Science and Our Future” event, July 1, 2012, held at the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival, Brian Greene, Professor of Physics and Mathematics at Columbia University, discussed the importance of this discovery.