“We want to do more than simply play pieces, which is why we regularly select a theme for our concerts”, explains Jos van de Braak, conductor of Orkest Zuid - a company that includes many (former)TU/e students and staff members. Van de Braak, who from 1992 thru 2007 conducted the Eindhoven Student Music Society Quadrivium, had contacts with the ICMS and got interested in the central research theme of that group - how is a cell made. “I got fascinated by this and started thinking what one could do with that question in music.” ICMS director prof.dr. Bert Meijer warmed to this idea without any trouble at all. Meijer: “This is a fantastic initiative. I always make an effort to disseminate science among the general public. That is why last year I presented the lecture entitled ‘Why we cannot make life’ at Lowlands. It is important to form new combinations and the interaction between science and music is one of them. People are more inclined to listen to the St. Matthew Passion more often, whereas they will not easily attend the same lecture four times.”

At TU/e and in the Amsterdam Science Center Nemo the experiment of Miller and Urey is imitated. They put methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water into a sealed bowl and exposed this to electric discharges. They discovered that amino acids are formed as a result, the building blocks of proteins. An imitation of the assumed origin of the Earth some four billion years ago. For five years now there has been such a gas-filled bowl both at TU/e and in NEMO.

This research project is at the basis of the thematic concert ‘Zoeken in de oersoep - muziek en het ontstaan van het leven’ (Searching in the primordial soup - music and the origin of life). Each piece has a certain link with the theme. Thus, in Gravity and Awareness a love story has been created in the primordial soup. The Passacaglia and fugue by Bach contains a development and Les Préludes by Liszt harbors the origin of a germ cell. The concert works towards its climax in the Bolero. In an interval Meijer presents a short version of his Lowlands lecture. “Quite exciting to do this in between musical compositions”, he says./.

On May 2 visitors can listen to the performance at Muziekcentrum Frits Philips in Eindhoven and on July 3 at Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ in Amsterdam. Orkest Zuid will also play the Bolero in Nemo on July 3.
Students can buy tickets at a discount until April 28 for the performance of May 2, see www.tue.nl/sg.