DESCRIPTION:
LSO Soundhub Showcase Concert, LSO St Luke's, Saturday 11 January 2014

Darren Bloom - Composer
Daniel Cohen - Conductor

Gareth Davies - Flute
Lorenzo Iosco - Bass Clarinet
Paul Mayes - Trumpet
Neil Percy - Percussion
John Alley - Piano
Fontane Liang - Harp
David Alberman - Violin I
David Worswick - Violin II
Paul Silverthorne - Viola
Dan Gardner - Cello
Jani Pensola - Double Bass

Programme note:
Dr. Glaser's Experiment is named after Dr. Donald A. Glaser, the Nobel Prize winning particle physicist and inventor of the bubble chamber device -- a precursor to today's particle accelerators. It was the enigmatic and strikingly beautiful images created by these experiments that formed the initial inspiration for this piece. The chambers work by firing charged particles into superheated (above boiling point, without boiling) liquid hydrogen, leaving an ionization track that turns into microscopic trails of bubbles and triggers a set of cameras.

Part 1 plunges the listener deep into a dormant bubble chamber. The music is dense, but extremely quiet. Minute changes in texture (such as a quiet pizzicato, low flutter tongue or tremolo, harmonic glissando, etc.) stick out just enough to be distinguished from the rest of the music. Occasional quiet flickers of energy will occur, sometimes interacting with the other material floating nearby. As the music climbs upwards (led by the two violins at the extreme ends of the ensemble), the listeners should imagine themselves on the scale of a subatomic particle, floating and nearly weightless.

Although this section of the work sets out an aural depiction of the environment within a bubble chamber, my hope is that the piece, when complete, will serve to celebrate our society's growing knowledge of nature thanks to extraordinary scientists like Donald Glaser.