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Wichita Symphony Orchestra\u2019s next concert aims to satisfy both the right and left halves of the brain.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhat Music Is,\u201d next Sunday at the Century II concert hall, is a multimedia convergence of science, art and sound that scientifically explains our attraction to the art form.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThis is 20 years of research combined into an entertaining and educational show that reveals a new theory for what music is doing for our species,\u201d said Bill Barclay, the creator of the project and narrator of the performance. \u201cIt is not a tour through fun facts; it is a story of science from beginning to middle to end.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Barclay collaborated with a neuroscientist and an astrophysicist in creating \u201cWhat Music Is,\u201d which will result in a book with a 2028 publication scheduled.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt gives the audience, for the first time ever, a radically new understanding of why music is essential, and why these orchestras, who are under threat, must stay a part of our ecosystem while we digitize,\u201d Barclay said from his home in New York City.<\/p>\n
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Barclay, artistic director of Concert Theatre Works, which produces 30 different performances, said he was following his own curiosity when creating the project.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI was mostly fascinated by the way there were musical relationships between speeds of planets in our solar system. I thought it was a coincidence, and I asked astronomer friends of mine who said it was a coincidence,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I wasn\u2019t happy with that.\u201d<\/p>\n
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That idea of entrainment \u2014 incorporation rhythms \u2014 is a general physical concept which is immediately understandable to anyone who has ever danced along to a piece of music, Barclay said.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s applicable for those who are musicians or those who feel like they can\u2019t carry a note.<\/p>\n
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\u201cMost people have grown up to feel music is too complicated or they\u2019re not good at it or they have a terrible voice or they\u2019ll never understand it,\u201d he said. \u201cI really think there\u2019s been some exclusivity to music theory that is unhelpful. There have been bad teacher situations that make people think they\u2019re not musical. And we have a larger project to make sure everyone feels like music is a space that they can be a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Aimed at middle schoolers through adults, \u201cWhat Music Is\u201d is designed to give scientific meaning to music.<\/p>\n
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\u201cA lot of people in the audience who have felt vaguely traumatized by feeling at the altar of musical meaning can emerge with a very strong sense of, \u2018Oh my God, I really got that,\u2019\u201d Barclay said. \u201cIf the hearer really gets it, we can get in the spaceship and go on a journey where the universe does exhibit these strange, exotic instances of order. Those moments of consonance don\u2019t get as much PR as entropy and chaos and randomness and chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWhat Music Is\u201d had its debut performances in February by sister orchestras in Durango, Colo., and Farmington, N.M. Those orchestras are conducted by Thomas Heuser, who will lead the performance by the Wichita Symphony.<\/p>\n
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The visuals come from animator Shawn Feeney, whose resume includes work for Industrial Light & Magic at Lucasfilm.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s designed to dazzle and also give you something you\u2019re going to hold onto forever,\u201d Barclay said. \u201cOur ambition is just to change people\u2019s relationship to music so that their curiosity is piqued and they start to think about music to enhance their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
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The music that accompanies the animation and Barclay\u2019s narration includes Debussy\u2019s \u201cPrelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,\u201d Elgar\u2019s \u201cNimrod\u201d from the \u201cEnigma Variations,\u201d \u201cJupiter\u201d from Holst\u2019s \u201cThe Planets,\u201d \u201cStarburst\u201d by new composer Jesse Montgomery, Beethoven\u2019s Fifth Symphony and Kaija Saariaho\u2019s \u201cAsteroid 4179 \u2013 Toutatis.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe\u2019ve got a wild variety of famous pieces from composers who sell tickets on their own,\u201d Barclay said. \u201cIt works. It\u2019s a great suite of music.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s very thought-provoking, and really it\u2019s about a new theory of music in the universe,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re promoting it hard, because everywhere we\u2019re really seeing a trend for confusing us, randomizing us, telling us things are going in tangled directions \u2014 towards violence, towards misinformation, towards technocrats controlling everything.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut we do all have, as human beings, this predilection for music and consonance and we do not share an appreciation for music that is highly disordered, highly dissonant.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Barclay said he hopes to utilize the Wichita Symphony to help him in creating viral videos designed for Instagram to help promote the project.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe have doled out some of the information in snackable formats,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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When:<\/b> 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16<\/p>\n
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Where:<\/b> Century II concert hall, 225 W. Douglas<\/p>\n
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Tickets:<\/b> $29-$85, from wichitasymphony.org, the WSO box office and 316-267-7658<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.kansas.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Wichita Symphony Orchestra\u2019s next concert aims to satisfy both the right and left halves of the brain. \u201cWhat Music Is,\u201d next Sunday at the Century II concert hall, is a multimedia convergence of science, art and sound that scientifically explains our attraction to the art form. \u201cThis is 20 years of research combined into an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2144820,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[409627,409628,409629,409626],"class_list":["post-2144819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-century-ii-concert-hall","tag-multimedia-concert","tag-music-and-science","tag-wichita-symphony"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Wichita-Symphony-blends-science-art-and-sound-at-Century-II.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2144819"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144819\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2144821,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2144819\/revisions\/2144821"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2144820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2144819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2144819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2144819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}