CERN’s Cosmic Piano and Jazz Pianist Jam Together at The Montreux Jazz Festival

The Mon­treux Jazz Fes­ti­val — the sec­ond largest jazz fes­ti­val in the world — has seen many acts come and go since it kicked off in 1967. Miles Davis, Kei­th Jar­rett, Nina Simone, Bill Evans and Ella Fitzger­ald have all played there. And now we have the first con­cert per­formed by a jazz pianist (Al Blat­ter) and The Cos­mic Piano, an instru­ment cre­at­ed by par­ti­cle physi­cists at CERN, the home of the Large Hadron Col­lid­er, in Switzer­land. The Cos­mic Piano works some­thing like this: “When a cos­mic ray pass­es through one of four sep­a­rate detec­tor pads of the Cos­mic Piano, it trig­gers a musi­cal note and a colour­ful flash of light.” The rays arrive in ran­dom inter­vals, and once they’re com­bined with Blat­ter’s notes, you get some inter­est­ing polyrhyth­mic jazz. Catch a few high­lights above, and get more back­ground infor­ma­tion and video clips on CERN’s web site.

via @matthiasrascher

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