The physics department has always had its fair share of obsession over music, every year (I don’t know since when) we meet at the Roy Barnett Auditorium for a night of multitude of music, on the last Friday before reading break.
The night started off with a demonstration of how helium affects the voice and instruments by professor Chris Waltham. As many of us may know, helium raises the formant (speaking pitch) of the human voice, this is because helium is a lighter gas compared to the atmosphere, allowing for easier vibrations, leading to higher resonance modes.
Then we were greeted with Chopin’s Etude Op.25 No.12 in C minor, performed by grad student Leo Sporn. Chopin’s Etudes are quite a sight live, Leo’s fingers were flying left to right, laying down a storm of arpeggios. The piece is the last of Chopin’s formal studies of the piano, opus 25. The piece is composed of various arpeggios in various chord progressions in C minor, with the climax finishing in C major.
Then we got to hear Erik Satie’s Gnossienne No.1 performed by professor Frank Curzon. The Gnossiennes are well known for being free time, without time signatures of bar lines, though it feels like the piece is set in duple meter with a distinct feel. Satie was an influential artist as a part of the late 19th century Parisian avant-garde, a friend of Debussy, serving as a precursor to later movements such as minimalism.
The show had a great amount of variety. Amidst all the classical pieces, and other unmentioned classical guitar pieces, we had some pop and rock covers. A cover of When the Party’s Over by Billie Eilish was covered by grad student Samantha Cibere; Billie Eilish is a pop singer that’s been getting quite a lot of buzz in the pop music sphere as of late, making pop music featuring very softly sang vocals, as well as lyrics some would call ‘edgy’. A cover of Cream’s White Room was performed by two guitars and a bassist; they didn’t have a drummer, so the drum fills have been replaced by the trio stopping on the floor of the recital hall, it was a big embarassing to witness, but redeemable for its charming attempt. A jazzy cover of Childish Gambino’s Redbone was performed by two of my fellow undergrads, it was a very done cover; it’s always cool to see fellow students I sit in lectures with bust out unexpected talents.
Then we had a jazz trio, of piano, bass, and alto saxophone composed of professors Jim Bryan, James Charbonneau, and Mark Van Raamsdonk. They performed two jazz standards: Body and Soul by Johnny Green, and Straight, No Chaser by Thelonious Monk. Both Mark and Jim took turns soloing over the tracks. I’ve previously had the privilege to play with Mark and James as a part of the year end science one concert four years ago, and it was nice to get a chance to see Mark and James perform again prior to graduating and leaving.
To cap off the night, a string trio arrangement of Czárdás by Vittorio Monti was arranged by student Chironjeev Kanjilal, and performed by him and two other students, Kanjilal played the violin, and two cellists made up the rest of the trio .I couldn’t find much information on Monti besides his arrangement of the Czárdás, based on the music played commonly during Hugarian traditional folk dances also called Czárdás. The piece combined elements from both 19th century classical compositions, evident section with more free flowing melodies, and traditional Hungarian dance music element, incorporating faster tempo and looping melodies that was easily danceable to. Kanjilal ended the piece with all three players playing a series false harmonics in harmony with their instruments, likely to tease the physicists; it sure made me wonder ‘how they made that super high sound’, I went to ask them right after the show regarding if that was a harmonic and they told me about the false harmonics workings.
This was my last Physics and Astronomy department concert as an undergrad, I’m a little disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to perform during one, if I was to return to UBC as a grad student I’ll definitely perform there if I have time.