presents
A LITTLE LIGHT MUSICSongs of Electromagnetic Radiation
Songs by David Haines,Michael Ching, Andrea Gaudette,
Ruth Hertzman-Miller, Daniel Kallman, Dan Kohane, Bruce Lazarus,
Tim Maurice, and Lauren Mayer
Directed by Laura Backley
Cambridge Science Festival 2015Cambridge, Massachusetts
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presents
A LITTLE LIGHT MUSICSongs of Electromagnetic Radiation
Songs by David Haines,Michael Ching, Andrea Gaudette,
Ruth Hertzman-Miller, Daniel Kallman, Dan Kohane, Bruce Lazarus,
Tim Maurice, and Lauren Mayer
Directed by Laura Backley
Producer: Carla ProcaskeyArtistic Director: David Bass
Piano ........................................................... David HainesSlideshow ................................................ Carla ProcaskeyGraphic Design ................................................... Sue HallWebsite/IT Support ..................Nick Aiuto and Phil Budne
Museum of Science: Sunday, April 19, 2015, 6:00pmBroad Institute: Saturday, April 25, 2015, 3:00pm Peabody School: Sunday, April 26, 2015, 3:00pm
www.familyopera.org
A Little Light Music: Singers and Artists
North Cambridge Family Opera Festival ChorusDirected by Laura Backley
Laura BackleyDavid BassNadine BerenguierAbbe Cohen DvornikBert DvornikKatarina DvornikLuka DvornikChris EdelEmma EhringFiona EhringSusan HallHeather HoffmanKatie Julien SirenHope KelleyJohn Kernochan
Kathy LindsayTara McCaffreyGlenn McElhoeJulie McKinneyJeff MooreMary PennistonCarla ProcaskeyRuth RogersEllen Ryan*Tara Shankar**Uma ShankarChris SirenAllison ZuccaMaddy Zucca
*Narrator in “Green Magic”**Soloist in “Refraction”
Members of the South Devon SingersDirected by David Haines
Willi ArmesMarion BrunsdonDavid Haines
Rachael ShearmurRichard Walford
Students from the Cambridgeport School Students from the Martin Luther King, Jr. School
Directed by Andrea Gaudette
Thanks to those providing artwork for the slideshow!• students of Lolly Lincoln at the Fletcher Maynard Academy
• students of Jeff Konigsberg at the Cambridgeport School• members of the NCFO Festival Chorus
A Little Light Music: Order of Program
ROY G BIV ............................................................................ Bruce Lazarus
What’s in a Shadow?...............................................................Lauren Mayer
Cosmic Microwave Background .............................................David Haines
What Do You See, Butterfly? ................................................. Michael ChingLyrics by Jennifer L. Knox
Straight Lines ..........................................................................David Haines
Earth’s Sweet Song ...............................................................Daniel KallmanLyrics by Christine Kallman
Invisible Colors ..................................................................Andrea Gaudette
Looking at the Past ....................................................................Dan KohaneLyrics by Colin Killick
Songs from the Cambridge Public Schools 2014, by David Haines, with… – Lettuce in the Closet .......................................... Morse School, Grade 1 – Photosynthesong ............................. Vassal Lane Upper School, Grade 7 – Shadows .........................................................Peabody School, Grade 4 – Lights at Night ........................................King Open School, Grades 1/2 – Phases of the Moon ................................King Open School, Grades 3/4 – Lights through the Day .................................... Baldwin School, Grade 1
Green Magic ........................................................................ Michael ChingPoem by James Patrick Kelly
Living Light .............................................................................David Haines
Refraction ...............................................................................David HainesLyrics by Rachael Shearmur
The Ballad of Michelson and Morley ......................... Ruth Hertzman-MillerLyrics by Meg Muckenhoupt
Laser .......................................................................................David HainesLyrics by Rachael Shearmur
Sky Dance ...........................................................................Daniel KallmanLyrics by Christine Kallman
Doppler Shift ............................................................................Tim Maurice
We Won’t Get Burned ............................................................Lauren Mayer
With the exception of “Straight Lines” and “Living Light”, these pieces are all world premieres commissioned by NCFO for this performance.
A Little Light Music: Program NotesROY G BIV (world premiere) – Isaac Newton divided the visible spectrum into seven colors, identifiable by this acronym. Newton chose the number seven based on a mystical belief that the number of colors should match the number of notes in a musical scale, the number of days in the week, and the number of known objects in the solar system.
What’s in a Shadow? (world premiere) – No program about light would be complete without a song about the absence of light and its three parts: the umbra (where the light source is completely blocked), the penumbra (where the light source is only partially blocked), and the antumbra (where the object causing the shadow is entirely within the light source).
Cosmic Microwave Background (world premiere) – The night sky is full of microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang. The tiny irregularities in this radiation are indicative of the density contrast in the early universe, which ultimately led to the structure of today’s universe, from galaxy clusters to vegetable soup!
What Do You See, Butterfly? (world premiere) – Some animals, such as butterflies, bats, cuttle fish, and cats, can see light wavelengths, intensities and polarization that we cannot.
Straight Lines – The fastest thing in the universe, light always travels in a straight line. Even when apparently bent by large gravitational fields, such as those surrounding a black hole, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity shows that gravity actually curves space, not the path of the light.
Earth’s Sweet Song (world premiere) – Earth’s temperature is determined by the balance between visible radiation from the sun and infrared that Earth radiates into space. Carbon dioxide profoundly affects that balance.
Invisible Colors (world premiere) – We can see the colors of the visible spectrum, but not shorter wavelengths (such as ultraviolet) or longer wavelengths (such as infrared).
Looking at the Past (world premiere) – Light travels unbelievably fast, but the universe is so large that it takes unbelievably long for light to travel between stars and galaxies.
Songs from the Cambridge Public Schools, 2014 – A medley of six songs from David’s workshops in the Cambridge Public Schools, including: Lettuce in the Closet – plants need water and light to survive Photosynthesong – 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + sunlight = C6H12O6 (sugar) + 6 O2
Shadows – our atmosphere scatters light, making our shadows less dark Lights at Night – moon, stars, and fireflies! Phases of the Moon – new, crescent, quarter, gibbous, full, and back again Lights through the Day – our miraculous eyesight guides our day
A Little Light Music: Program Notes, continuedGreen Magic (world premiere) – The alchemists’ dream of turning lead into gold doesn’t hold a candle to plants’ trick of turning carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight into glucose and oxygen.
Living Light – Fireflies are not the only bioluminescent life forms. An estimated 90% of deep sea life emits light. David Haines enjoys nighttime swimming in the English Channel, surrounded by bioluminescent algae.
Refraction (world premiere) – sin(θ1) v1 n2
sin(θ2) v2 n1
This is Snell’s Law, which describes the path that light takes when it passes through a boundary between two media (like air and water).
The Ballad of Michelson and Morley (world premiere) – The story of the most momentous failed experiment in the history of physics, in which the existence of an “ether” through which light traveled was proven false, paving the way for Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Sometimes failed experiments are more important than successful ones!
Laser (world premiere) – Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. Quantum mechanics is our friend!
Sky Dance (world premiere) – Auroras are caused when some charged particles of the solar wind escape the magnetosphere and enter the atmosphere, exciting the electrons of the oxygen and nitrogen molecules. As these electrons return to their normal state, they release light in the beautiful colors of the aurorae.
Doppler Shift (world premiere) – As with sound, the wavelength and frequency of light change as an object moves toward or away from the observer.
We Won’t Get Burned (world premiere) – Ultraviolet light is bad news for our skin, but sunscreen keeps most of it out.
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Ruth Hertzman-Miller is a Boston-area physician and musician who has studied composition with John Stewart at Harvard, John Morrison at Longy, and Stephen Savage at New England Conservatory. She performs regu-larly with NCFO and was last seen as Agnes in the 2015 production of Kids Court.
David Haines has written fifteen music theater works, including The Puzzle Jigs, performed by NCFO in 2003 and 2008. He has worked with thousands of schoolchil-dren and has a special interest in using song to augment the science curriculum. The NCFO Festival Chorus has performed David’s science oratorios Lifetime: Songs of Life
and Evolution, and Powers of Ten. The latter was the official opening event of the first USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington DC in 2010. David is the Cambridge Science Festival’s Songwriter-in-Residence 2011-2015. He lives and teaches in Teignmouth, Devon in southwestern England.
Andrea Gaudette has been playing music profes-sionally since age 14, when her first job carried the title “substitute organist” for her parish church. She has been teaching piano, theory, composition, voice, choir, instru-mental ensembles and creative arts to children in a variety of settings since 1988. She currently teaches music in the
Cambridge Public Schools, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. School and the Cambridgeport School. Andrea lives in Cambridge with her husband and 17-year-old daughter. They have been active in NCFO since 2006.
A Little Light Music: BiographiesLaura Backley has been directing the children and adults of the NCFO Festival Chorus since her 2010 debut with the chorus’s astronomy production, Looking Up. Laura has a Masters of Music from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. In addition to working with NCFO, she is on the faculty of the Cambridge School
of Weston, teaching music and theater. She also teaches voice at the All Newton Music School.
Michael Ching is a composer and conductor, who is best known nationally for his innovative operas. His most recent opera is Speed Dating Tonight! His a cappella opera adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2011) has just been released on Albany Records. He is music director of Nickel City Opera in Buffalo, NY.
Michael lives in Iowa and would enjoy hearing from you about his pieces at [email protected].
Christine Kallman is a playwright, lyricist, poet and musician. She has taught music and theater to young people in the classroom, theater camp, and private stu-dio. Among her works are full-length plays, one-acts, and musicals. In addition to writing song lyrics, Kallman has received several commissions to write hymn texts.
Dan Kohane’s music ranges from serious concert piec-es, to liturgical music for the synagogue, to rock and pop-ular songs. Influences range from Stravinsky to klezmer to funk. He has written a number of pieces for solo voice and choir. Dan’s last major collaboration with Colin resulted in Me and the Devil: A Blues Oratorio, which premiered
Jennifer L. Knox’s new book of poems, Days of Shameand Failure, will be published by Bloof Books in 2015. Her poems have appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series (1997, 2003, 2006, and 2011) as well as in such publications as The New York Times and The New Yorker. She currently teaches at Iowa State University.
Colin Killick is a lyricist and playwright. His prior works include the two works Sonnet and Me and the Dev-il: A Blues Oratorio, both with Dan Kohane; as well as the plays Villagers and Brundibar: Hear My Voice. He gradu-ated from Williams College and enjoys loud concerts, Brit-ish comedy, and shouting at his laptop about politics.
James Patrick Kelly is an American author, primar-ily known for his science fiction. He has received Hugo Awards for his novelettes “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995) and “1016 to 1” (1999); and the 2006 Nebula Award for his novella, Burn. He is currently on the faculty for the Stone-coast MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University
of Southern Maine.
Daniel Kallman’s compositions for orchestra, winds, and choir are widely published and performed across North America, Europe and East Asia. His steady stream of commissions includes music for worship, theater, dance, and the young musician. Kallman has composed for the National Symphony Orchestra, the Air Force Academy
Band, the Hong Kong Children’s Choir, the Minnesota Orchestra, A Prairie Home Companion, and a wide variety of vocal and instrumental ensembles. Kallman’s works are catalogued on his website at www.kallmancreates.com.
A Little Light Music: Biographies
A Little Light Music: Biographiesat Williams College with Dan conducting. In his free time he enjoys playing guitar, hiking, and learning to make funny noises.
Bruce Lazarus is a composer and pianist whose works, which include music for piano, solo voice, chorus, and chamber ensemble, have often been inspired by astro-nomical imagery, the poems of Lewis Carroll, and theater and dance. Lazarus studied at Juilliard where he earned his B.M. and M.M. in music composition. He resides in
New York City, and may be contacted at [email protected].
Tim Maurice is a classically trained musician working as an arranger, music director, and pianist. He has written and recorded music for several independent film projects, ranging from short films to web series. Born in Maine, Tim attended Bates College, where he studied piano, and Berklee College of Music, where he earned a B.M. in Film
Scoring. Tim has done orchestration and arranging work for NCFO in the past, but this is his first original composition for the group.
Lauren Mayer is a California-based writer and enter-tainer. She is a graduate of Yale, the founder of Curriculum Rocks (producing award-winning children’s education-al music), the writer of several published musicals, and a five-time recipient of the San Francisco Cabaret Gold Award. She has recorded four albums of comedy songs.
Despite these awards and accomplishments, Lauren’s mother still doesn’t understand why she didn’t go to law school.
Meg Muckenhoupt is an environmental and travel writer. She is widely published, but she feels her finest work was “Horton Sees a Pluto,” which appeared in the Annals of Improbable Research. Remember, a planet’s a planet no matter how small. She is delighted to hear her lyrics debut in this year’s Cambridge Science Festival.
Rachael Shearmur was a member of the choir which premiered David Haines’ Lifetime in the UK in 2004. She studied Law at the other Cambridge and never really ex-pected one day to be writing song lyrics. She and David share a passion for sea swimming, and it was the biolumi-nescence which they saw in the nighttime waters around
David’s home town of Teignmouth which inspired her to write a poem touching on the science behind the phenomenon. David asked if he could set it to music, and they have since then collaborated on a number of songs.
MISSION STATEMENTThe North Cambridge Family Opera (NCFO) provides an opportunity for children and adults to experience and enjoy telling a story through song by performing origi-nal, high-quality, fully-sung operas and choral works for audiences of all ages. Our casts of children and adults come from Cambridge and other communities in the greater Boston area. We encourage participation by multiple family members. Solo and chorus roles varying widely in difficulty are assigned to both children and adults, so that everyone is both challenged and given an opportunity to succeed. To the ex-tent possible, productions are financed through donations and volunteerism.
NCFO began as a participant in the 2nd North Cambridge (NoCa) All Arts Open Studios weekend in May 1999, and has since incorporated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit and produced a family opera every spring. Since 2007, NCFO has also presented a concert of science songs every year as part of the Cambridge Science Festival.
THANK YOUNCFO gratefully acknowledges the following people and organizations
for their generous support of the NCFO Science Festival Chorus
It is hard to believe that this is our ninth year participating in the Cambridge Science Festival. We are ever grateful to John Durant for his ambitious vision and to everyone associated with the Festival for their ongoing efforts to promote science for all. Thanks, too, to the Museum of Science for donating the use of the Cahners Auditorium.
Thank you as always to David Haines, who has contributed several of the songs for this year’s performance; is spending several weeks in the Cambridge Public Schools, teaching kids about songwriting; and is providing the piano accompaniment for many of our songs. David also put together the medley of songs written last year by the Cambridge Public School students. We are also grateful for the grant that the City of Cambridge has provided to support David’s teaching in the schools.
We very much appreciate the lovely songs contributed by all of our other composers and lyricists. Thanks for expanding our ever-growing repertoire of accessible science songs. We are also grateful to the students of Lolly Lincoln at the Fletcher Maynard Academy and the students of Jeff Konigsberg at the Cambridgeport School as well as everyone else who supplied artwork for our excellent slideshow. Finally, many thanks to Andrea Gaudette, who has brought many of her students from the Cambridgeport School and the Martin Luther King, Jr. School to sing with us!
A special thank you goes to Andy Adler and Ann Braude, David Bass and Sue Hall, and Carla Procaskey and Tony Flanders, who graciously hosted David Haines and the visiting members of the South Devon Singers during their stays in the US. Thanks also to Carla Procaskey, David Bass, and Hope Kelley, who accompanied David on his classroom visits to the schools.
We are very grateful to both Thalia Tringo Real Estate and the Harvard Summer School High School Program for their NCFO Sponsorships; to Andy Adler and Ann Braude for their generous support; and to the Cambridge Community Foundation and the Cambridge Arts Council for their grants to NCFO in support of David Haines’s teach-ing in the public schools.
Finally, our greatest appreciation goes to our chorus members, some of whom have been with us for all of our nine Cambridge Science Festival productions. Thanks for sharing with us your music, your friendship, and your financial support.
