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
Related Content:
NASA & Grateful Dead Drummer Mickey Hart Record Cosmic Sounds of the Universe on New Album
The Soundtrack of the Universe
CERN Physicist Explains the Origins of the Universe for Beginners with a Short Animated Video
Higgs Boson, the Musical: CERN Data Turned into Melody
Free Stanford Course Explains Particle Physics & the Large Hadron Collider
The Higgs Boson, AKA the God Particle, Explained with Animation
Leave a Reply