Events

Past Event

The Science of Jazz: Linking Music & The Structure of the Universe

February 23, 2017
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Event time is displayed in your time zone.
Varis Leichtman Studio, Lincoln Center, 60th and Broadway, New York, NY

Speakers: 

For the third year, Jazz at Lincoln Center presents one of our most popular events: Science of Jazz. This unique and intimate evening explores the dynamic connection between the sciences and jazz in this special lecture series. This year’s edition will feature physicist and musician Stephon Alexander in conversation with saxophonist/composer María Grand. Alexander and Grand will use musical samples to illustrate how a physicist – or a jazz musician – approach the process of experimentation. Attendees will discover how some leaps in Physics operate like Jazz solos.

Physicist and musician Stephon Alexander has straddled the two worlds of theoretical physics and jazz music over the last two decades. He obtained his Bachelors of Science from Haverford College and Doctorate from Brown and was a research physicist at Imperial College, London and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Stanford University.

Saxophonist, composer, and educator María Grand was born in Switzerland in 1992, to a Swiss mother and an Argentinian father. Upon her moving to New York in 2011, she became the protégée of legendary musicians such as Steve Coleman, Billy Harper, and Antoine Roney, as well as NEA Jazz Master Von Freeman. She has since toured extensively with MacArthur Awardee Steve Coleman and his small ensemble, the Five Elements, as well as Steve Coleman and the Council of Balance and Steve Coleman and Natal Eclipse. She is a regular member of free funk/avant-garde jazz drummer, composer, poet, producer and professor Doug Hammond’s Quintet and of mridangam artist and scholar Rajna Swaminathan’s RAJAS. She also performs with Grammy Award winner Román Filiú in his groups Ouroboros and Quartería. María can be heard on Steve Coleman’s latest and critically acclaimed album, Synovial Joints.

Tickets range from $50 for members to $75 for non-members. Please visit the website for more details.

This event is sponsored by Jazz at Lincoln Center.