Artfinity<\/a>, MIT\u2019s largest public festival of the arts since 2011, featuring more than 80 free performing and visual arts events. The concert hall will host performances throughout the spring, ranging from classical to jazz to rap, and more.<\/p>\nInstitute Professor Marcus Thompson \u2014 the faculty co-lead for Artfinity alongside Azra Ak\u0161amija, director and associate professor of the Art, Culture, and Technology Program (ACT) at MIT \u2014 shared thoughts on the Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building as a point of orientation for the festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cOur building offers the opportunity to point to the presence and importance of other art forms, media, practices, and experiences that can bring us together as practitioners and audiences, lifting our spirits and our sights,\u201d Thompson reflected. \u201cAn ensemble of any kind is a community as well as a metaphor for what connects us, applying different talents to create more than we can do alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new compositions by the four faculty members were a case in point. The program opened with\u00a0\u201cSummit,\u201d a brass fanfare projected from the top of the hall with ceremonial zeal. \u201cThe piece was specifically written as an opener for the concert,\u201d Zen\u00f3n explained. \u201cMy aim was to compose something that would make a statement straight away, while also using the idea of the \u2018groove\u2019 as a driving force. The title has two meanings. The first is a mountaintop, or the top of a structure \u2014 which is where the ensemble will be placed for the performance. The second is a gathering of great minds and great leaders, which is what MIT feels like for me.\u201d Later in the program, Zen\u00f3n premiered a jazz contrafact,\u00a0\u201cMates,\u201d playing on Benny Golson\u2019s Stablemates, a tribute to Herb Pomeroy, founder of MIT\u2019s jazz program. \u201cThe idea here is to use something connected to the jazz tradition \u2014 and to Boston\u2019s history \u2014 and approach it from a more personal perspective,\u201d said Zen\u00f3n.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwo Noble Kinsmen,\u201d by Harbison, was composed as a benediction for the new home of MIT Music. \u201cIn choosing to set Shakespeare\u2019s final words in this new piece for choir and strings, I wanted to convey the sense of an invocation, an introduction, an address to unseen forces,\u201d said Harbison. \u201cIn this case, I wanted to leave the musical structure as plain as possible so that we understand why these words are chosen. I hoped to capture the stoic balance of these lines \u2014 they are in themselves a kind of verbal music.\u201d<\/p>\n
In setting the words of the poem \u201cGrace,\u201d\u00a0by the Chickasaw poet Linda Hogan, Shadle \u2014 a composer of Choctaw heritage \u2014 envisioned a \u201csonic extension\u201d of the MIT Land Acknowledgement. \u201c\u2018Grace\u2019 intended to speak to the Indigenous presence at the Institute and to open the new building with a reminder of the balm music that can bring to a troubled world,\u201d said Shadle. \u201cI hope that I have composed music that links Indigenous and Western traditions in ways that are compelling and thoughtful and that, while recognizing the \u2018pieces of hurt,\u2019 still makes a place for grace.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before the concert\u2019s euphoric finale \u2014 a performance by Rambax Senegalese Drum Ensemble directed by Lamine Tour\u00e9 \u2014 \u201cMadrigal\u201d (the evening\u2019s fourth world premiere) served to demonstrate the spatial dimensions of sound made possible by the design of the concert hall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Makan\u2019s composition was performed by four student violinists positioned at the top of each aisle and a fifth, Professor Natalie Lin Douglas, at the center of the stage, simultaneously showcasing the geometry of the hall and referencing the ever-shifting perspectives of the sculpture that stands at the north entrance of the building \u2014 \u201cMadrigal\u00a0(2024),\u201d\u00a0by Sanford Biggers.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy piece aims to capture the multifaceted quality of Sanford Biggers\u2019 sculpture. From whichever vantage point we might look at it, we see the same patterns in new relationships with one another. In other words, there is no one point of view that is privileged over another.\u201d<\/p>\n
As faculty lead for the building project, Makan developed a friendship with Joyce Linde, who provided the principal gift that led to the building. \u201cJoyce and I were on the selection committee to choose an artist to create a site-specific sculpture outside the building. She was very excited about the process, and very engaged with Sanford,\u201d said Makan. \u201cJoyce passed away before she was able to see the building\u2019s completion, and I wanted to honor her legacy by writing an original piece of music in her memory.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sense of relationship, pattern-making, and new beginnings was articulated by Frederick Harris, director and senior lecturer in music and the co-producer of the concert, alongside Andy Wilds, program manager in music. \u201cThe hall is an instrument; we\u2019re communing with this incredible space and getting to know it,\u201d said Harris. \u201cIt\u2019s a relationship. The circular form of the hall is very welcoming, not only to immersive experiences but also to shared experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n
The role of music in cultivating community will ensure that the building will become an integral part of MIT life. The work taking place in rehearsal rooms matches the innovation of the Institute\u2019s labs \u2014 proving that the arts are a necessary counterpart to science and technology, continuous with the human instinct to express and invent.\u00a0Sonic Jubilance sets the tone of what\u2019s to come.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MIT Music ensembles (in order of concert appearance):<\/p>\n<\/p><\/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 news.mit.edu \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), the German polymath whose life and work embodied the connections between the arts and sciences, is said to have described architecture as \u201cfrozen music.\u201d\u00a0 When the new\u00a0Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building at MIT had its public opening earlier this year, the temperature outside may have been below freezing but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2176426,"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":[418893,418907,418895,418905,418899,418890,418908,418903,418900,418901,418896,418904,418902,418898,418889,418891,418897,418892,418888,418887,418906,418894],"class_list":["post-2176425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-famle-mit-laptop-ensemble","tag-andy-wilds","tag-artfinity","tag-azra-aksamija","tag-charles-shadle","tag-edward-and-joyce-linde-music-building","tag-frederick-harris","tag-jay-scheib","tag-john-harbison","tag-keeril-makan","tag-madrigal-2024-sculpture","tag-marcus-thompson","tag-melissa-nobles","tag-miguel-zenon","tag-mit-art-culture-and-technology-program","tag-mit-chamber-music-society","tag-mit-composers","tag-mit-jazz","tag-mit-mta","tag-mit-music-and-theater-arts","tag-natalie-lin-douglas","tag-sonic-jubilance"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/The-Edward-and-Joyce-Linde-Music-Building-opens-with-Sonic.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176425","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=2176425"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176425\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176427,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2176425\/revisions\/2176427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2176426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2176425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2176425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2176425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}