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Singtastic to open the USA’s first national science festival

Singtastic composer David Haines’ science oratorio Powers of Ten will open the USA Science and Engineering Festival on the perfect Powers of Ten date - 10.10.10!

Powers of Ten is a sequence of songs that takes you on a journey from the human scale down to the smallest theoretical scale, the Planck distance, in a number about String Theory. On the way we encounter the Life that Lives on Man, Amoebae, Bacteria, Viruses, Atoms and Quarks in a series of tuneful, catchy songs that defy easy musical categorisation. The second half takes us on a journey in song up from the human scale covering Landscape, Tectonic Plates, Earth, Moon, Sun, Planets, Stars, Black Holes Galaxies and the Cosmos as a whole.

The festival will open in grand style with a chorus of around 200 children and adults from the Washington DC area performing in the glorious surroundings of the Elsie & Marvin Dekelboum Concert Hall at the the University of Maryland.

There will be further performances of songs from Powers of Ten on the National Mall (in the heart of city between the US Capitol and the Washington Monument) on the final day of the festival - 24th October.

Full details are on the Festival's website.

Teignmouth Science Festival

Sue Blake, co-director of Singtastic and director of the Teignmouth Science Festival writes:

The idea for Teignmouth Science Festival was sparked just a few months ago by the desire to perform Singtastic’s David Haines’ science oratorio Powers of Ten in his home town. One idea quickly led to another. Why don’t we hire the theatre? Why don’t we do it during NSEW? Why don’t we run a workshop for schools in the morning? What about the afternoon? What about a science day? What about a science FESTIVAL? We booked the theatre then set about filling the day with activities designed to arouse curiousity about science through David's music and by providing a platform for enthusiasts to share their passion with Teignmouth folk. One of the first things we did was to launch a new website teignmouthsciencefestival.com which is still going strong! Once the programme was decided we bombarded the town with posters and postcards, emailed people, sent press releases and spent ages networking in local cafes. Here is the programme we provided for the very first Teignmouth Science Festival:

Teignmouth Science Festival

Carlton Theatre

Friday 19th March 2010

Not interested in science? Come along and find out why you should be!
Love science? Come along and discover a great way to celebrate your enthusiasm!

Programme

Auditorium

10-00 to 11-30am Singing Science
Workshop for Primary Schools, led by David Haines

1-30 to 3-00pm What On Earth Evolved?
Multi-media Presentation led by Chris Lloyd and David Haines Admission £2 at the door

4-30 to 5-30pm Musical Squares
Multi-media Presentation for all over the age of 8, led by Mike and Wendy Gluyas Free but booking advised, contact Sue Blake, details below

6-00 to 7-00pm Cosmology - the Final Frontier
Multi-media Presentation for all over the age of 8, led by Adam Hart-Davis Free but booking advised, contact Sue Blake, details below

7-30 to 9-30pm Powers of Ten Science Oratorio by David Haines
Concert by the Teignmouth and Ivybridge Community Choirs Conducted by Jane Anderson-Brown and accompanied by David Haines Tickets £5 from the Carlton Box Office and Teignmouth Tourist Information Centre

Foyer and Lounge Bar

10-00am to 6-00pm Science Fun and Games
Science activities for all

10-00am to 10-30pm Refreshments
Bar open from 7-00pm

10-00am to 10-30pm Earth Art Gallery
Artwork by local primary pupils

Further details on our website teignmouthsciencefestival.com

Contact Festival Director Sue Blake
Telephone 01626 776 586 or 07775 652 439
Email sue@singtastic.com

Teignmouth Science Festival is sponsored and promoted by Singtastic.com
who reserve the right to make changes to the programme at any time.

How did the day go? Our press release provides a brief glimpse.

Talk to anyone who attended the first Teignmouth Science Festival at the Carlton Theatre on Friday and all agree, it was a triumph! Despite the inclement weather, people of all ages and backgrounds flocked to the theatre and had a wonderful time. There certainly was something to interest everyone.

The festival was opened at 10am by the Mayor, Councillor Vince Fusco, who said a few encouraging words to the youngsters about to take part in a Singing Science workshop. Emerging from the auditorium the mayor was amazed by the hustle and bustle of the Science Fair in the bar and foyer, and enthusiastically tried out the activities on offer. He learned more about the Norman Lockyer Observatory of Sidmouth and Teign Estuary Transition, then got to try out some 'Mad Science' and take on the Teignmouth and Shaldon Museum's challenge to construct something tall using just newspaper and tape. Councillor Fusco took a special interest in the presentations of 21 International Baccalaureate students from Ivybridge Community College, a project led by their teacher Alastair Cuthbertson who also sings in the Ivybridge Community Choir. The five topical subjects chosen by the students were - Ocean Warming, Acid Oceans, Bio-fuels, Photo Voltaic and Recycling. The Science Fair continued all day, the Ivybridge students being replaced in the afternoon by enthusiastic members of Trinity School's Science Club and Teignmouth Community Choir's Antony Turner exhibiting his intriguing Carbon Quilt, a way of making greenhouse gases visible to us all. The exhibitors proved a great hit, dealing with a range of visitors and coping admirably with the crowds emerging from the auditorium events.

Refreshments were provided by the Community Choir and Ana Hunt-Crebbin of Veggi Deli.

Primary pupils from Shaldon and Trinity submitted fantastic artwork for the Earth Art competition. David Haines had a very difficult task as judge.

"Thanks for letting me judge the Science Festival competition - I'm not sure whether it was a privilege or a curse! It's traditional with things like this to say "It was so difficult choosing a winner", but that really was true in this case. I was flabbergasted at the range of imagination and creativity the entrants displayed and the consistently high quality of the execution. It seems so unfair to choose just one or two winners when so many people have put so much of themselves into their wonderful work. Nevertheless the winning entries did in the end "float" to the top of the pile with their fantastic use of colour and form and their truly original interpretation of the competition theme. Okay, I've decided, it was a privilege! It was great to spend time looking and thinking about such a great selection of art from Teignmouth and Shaldon. Thanks for the opportunity! And my congratulations to both the winners and all the other talented entrants." The prizewinners were Starr Johnson, Kate Jones and Lucy West.

There was a a full programme of events in the auditorium. In the morning Teignmouth science-song composer David Haines led a fantastic workshop for over a hundred local primary schoolchildren on a selection of four numbers from Powers of Ten - his song cycle about the universe of magnitudes. He described how he was originally commissioned to write The Song of the Tamar Valley by a school in Plymouth with only a couple of days' notice. Even though he wrote the song in a matter of hours, this has proved to be one of the most popular in the Powers set and David remembers hundreds of children swaying their arms and singing it at the tops of their voices at the first local performance in Dawlish Leisure Centre back in 1999. With the help of Karen, Eileen, Christine and Irene from the choir (and an essential contribution from Irene's guide dog Toby!) David got some great singing from the children on Tamar and on the lilting Tectonic Waltz, the haunting Moon and the rollicking 93 Million Miles. David took the opportunity to point out that science is no static body of knowledge, but continuously changing and evolving when he asked the children to spot what was wrong in Moon due to recent discoveries. One hand in the auditorium shot up and a little girl shouted out "Water". "Exactly!", exclaimed David. "Recent studies have found an extremely thin layer of water ice on parts of the Moon's surface, so my song is now out-of-date!"

Science-mad David Haines describes the three afternoon events

What on Earth Evolved?
It was a very special treat for me to work again with science writer Christopher Lloyd on this What On Earth Evolved? presentation. I wrote and performed a couple of songs especially for the launch of his book at the Royal Institution last October (where the Christmas lectures come from). Chris's lecture was a quirky whirlwind tour of the history of life on earth and its effects on human history. Full of humour, surprises and connections you'd never have guessed, it moved along at breakneck speed, hardly pausing for breath and explaining such oddities as the development of artificial fertilisers leading to the abandoning of steam trains in a South American desert or how slime mould finds the quickest route through a maze! Chris is a real example of that rarest of beings - a Renaissance man, a polymath with the ability to weave together apparently disparate threads of knowledge to create stunning new connections that stick in the memory.

Musical Squares
Way back in 1992 New Scientist published a glowing account of Mike and Wendy Gluyas's remarkable acoustics presentation Musical Squares - and even then this amazing, action-packed science lecture had been going for 25 years! Of course it has evolved and developed hugely over the decades, but this energetic pair still rushed around like a pair of psyched-up teenagers, enthusiastically broadcasting revolting noises live to the giggling audience from a volunteer's stomach, or dashing about with large organ pipe which appeared to play itself as heated air passed through it. There were many laughs, but an equal number of insights during this wonderful hour of frenetic activity.

Cosmology
As I sat enjoying Adam Hart-Davis' Frontiers of Cosmology presentation on Friday evening, I must admit to more than slight trace of envy at the fabulous opportunities he'd had to visit mountain-top observatories in the Canaries and Chile or CERN's Large Hadron Collider buried deep beneath the mountains of France and Switzerland. But the charm and lively intellect of the man probably most entitled to call himself "the people's scientist" overcame my jealousy as he shared with the audience his huge enthusiasm and undimmed curiosity for the world about us. With his child-like energy, Adam took us on a journey exploring the places on Earth where scientist are exploring the places off Earth - indeed places as far away as the very edge of the observable universe, 13.7 billion light years distant. Children and audience alike were enthralled by his personal stories, intermingling seamlessly with the stories of the cosmos' own history and future and I felt very mean at the end having to draw proceedings to a close when so many people were still bursting with questions!

Finally, the concert!
A serenade to bacteria, an anthem sung by a river valley boasting of its ability to recover from the depradations of tin mining, a moody exploration in music of the mysteries inherent in string theory, a frenetic dash through the story of the Sun and its importance to life on earth - these were just a few of the highlights of Friday evening's performance of Powers of Ten, the unique and ground-breaking science oratorio by Teignmouth composer David Haines. Originally performed at Dawlish Leisure Centre in 1999 by hundreds of local schoolchildren, Powers has developed and grown over the years into a remarkable journey in song through the universe at different scales of magnitude. With performances scheduled for this year at major science festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, this was the first opportunity to hear the work performed in its creator's adopted home town.

Teignmouth and Ivybridge Community Choirs - both run by David Haines - were in fine form under the able baton of conductor Jane Anderson-Brown, who also sang several of the solos in her fine opera-trained voice. The songs were incredibly varied in style and content, but always engaging, even though some were musically (and intellectually!) demanding. The narrative thrust of the sequence (down the magnitudes in the first half, up during the second) was complemented by the spoken narrations of two talented local teenagers, Alice Morgan-Richards and Grace Bouchard, who also provided the solo line in Charmed Quark. Every sung word appeared as part of an illustrated Powerpoint presentation projected at the side of the stage and which brilliantly enabled the audience to follow the scientific content of the whole evening - as well as enjoying the occasional absurd pun in the lyrics!

A member of the audience summed it up.
"The choir could not have been improved. It was lively, full of fun, crisp, precise, melodious, and brilliantly interesting. The effect of the graphics alongside the songs held my children's attention utterly, until my youngest drifted off to sleep in a contented haze of enjoyment."

It was an amazing day.
We have booked the theatre for two days next year, Friday 18th and Saturday 19th March 2011 and plan for the Teignmouth Science Festival to run for the whole of NSEW at all kinds of venues. We will build on our 2010 experiences and just...go for it!

See how we are getting on by looking at teignmouthsciencefestival.com

Sue Blake

Singtastic to launch the first Teignmouth Science Festival on Friday 19 March 2010

It all started on a sunny summer evening, over a drink at the Ship with fellow Community Choir member Mavis. We talked about recent choir events at Forde House, the Carlton Theatre and the carnival marquee and looked forward to singing [behind a screen] in Granny Galactica in November.

We decided it would be good for Teignmouth Community Choir to have a proper concert sometime. Other choir members we bumped into over the summer were also excited by the idea.

I made enquiries about hiring the Carlton Theatre and, finding that Friday 19 March was available, I made a provisional booking. Singtastic agreed to underwrite the event so that Teignmouth Community Choir didn't have to worry about matters financial.

Things began to snowball when I realised that the theatre was available all day for a very reasonable cost and Singtastic secretary Sheila pointed out that 19 March was in the British Science Association's annual National Science and Engineering Week. I think it was also Sheila who said, 'Why don't we start our own science festival?'

So, all systems are GO for the first Teignmouth Science Festival. Details of the events are yet to be confirmed, but there'll be workshops, demonstrations, displays, talks and science-based activities, the grand finale being a performance of David Haines' science oratorio Powers of Ten, performed by, you've guessed it, Teignmouth Community Choir!

Sue Blake

David Haines presents his new science songs at the Royal Institution

David was delighted to be asked by author Christopher Lloyd to write a song to celebrate the 100 species identified in his new book What on Earth Evolved? In fact, David wrote two songs because he didn’t want to go down the patter-song route (à la Tom Lehrer’s periodic table song The Elements). The two songs are quite different, despite their mindbogglingly similar titles. The first song What on Earth Evolved? is a ballad mentioning 50 species that evolved in the wild, before man. In contrast, the second song, Whatever on Earth Evolved? is a jazzy catalogue of the second 50 species that thrived in the presence of man.

David was even more delighted to be asked to perform the songs at the book launch for What on Earth Evolved? at the Royal Institution in London on Thursday 8 October.

We arrived at the Royal Institution in Albemarle Street, Piccadilly on the appointed day, in good time for a rehearsal with Chris Lloyd. The Royal Institution has been a place of discovery over the past 200 years or so... we discovered that when unsure of the way (on foot) from Green Park Tube Station, it's much better to ask someone for directions than to try to use the Satnav!

Once inside we climbed the grand staircase, past the statue of Michael Faraday and into the theatre. Lectures have been held in the theatre since the early 19th Century. The Faraday Theatre is familiar to television viewers as the setting for the Children's Science Lectures broadcast each Christmas. Christopher Lloyd and David Haines were soon to join the long list of eminent speakers to grace that place - Michael Faraday, HG Wells, David Attenborough and Roger Bannister, to name but a few. No pressure then!

I was fascinated to watch Chris carefully sort out the props for his one-hour talk,

marvel at the film crew setting up,

and listen to David singing the songs....

again... and again... and yet again...

Will I ever get the tune of What on Earth Evolved? out of my head?

I continued to hear the songs over and over again as Chris synchronised the visuals with David's music for the powerpoint presentation.

After the rehearsal David and I took the opportunity to wander around the rest of the building.

In the far corner of the very grand library we found early editions of New Scientist and were amazed to find that the magazine began in the year of David's birth!

We ventured up into the gallery of the theatre and to the ultra-modern café, but not to the basement where we could apparently have heard Tom Lehrer's Elements song.

Shortly after six the audience was allowed in.

I thought I'd be able to just sit and watch a performance for once as professionals were videoing instead of me, but no, David thought I should film the songs on his new iPhone. I sat at the back, trying to remember David's instructions...don't switch it from silent to active, don't cover the lens with your finger, switch on in in good time...but be careful because the battery is rather low...

Most of the seats were filled when the show began at seven. Don't ask me much about it because I was busy concentrating on unfamiliar technology...thank you so much David! I can tell you that David performed really well and the audience loved the songs. Chris is a wonderful entertainer and his show - as well as his book - is highly recommended.

Both songs will be on the Singtastic website very soon. If you are impatient to hear them, follow the links below to access audio versions of David singing and Chris' powerpoint presentations, taken from the What on Earth Evolved? website.

What on Earth Evolved?

Whatever on Earth Evolved?

When will David and Chris perform the songs live again? Hopefully at the Carlton Theatre, Teignmouth on Friday 19th March...Watch this space!

Sue Blake

PS

Public science lectures at the Royal Institution were so popular that Albemarle Street was designated the first one-way street in London.

Science songs of David Haines to feature in New Scientist

David has been an avid reader of the New Scientist magazine for over 30 years, and has dreamed of Singtastic and his science songs getting a mention within the hallowed pages one day. Imagine his delight when his invitation to New Scientist's Amanda Gefter (Opinion Editor) to attend the forthcoming performance of Tremendous Journey at the Milton Keynes Science Festival, led to an email out of the blue from journalist Ellie Harris asking if David was prepared to do an interview for the Books & Arts section of the magazine!

Ellie's visit was planned with almost military precision. David met her from the train late last Monday afternoon and took her to straight to Haines House for the interview followed by a hasty cream tea. I don't know how David managed to relate his life-history, share his passion for science and music, and tell Ellie about all his future projects in less than an hour!

After tea it was off to the Cliffden Hotel summerhouse for a mini-concert by the Singtastic Singers of several songs from Tremendous Journey before the Teignmouth Community Choir rehearsal. The ensemble included Ellie's favourite song, Taxonomy, in their performance. The Singtastic Singers were delighted to perform for Ellie, it being almost a dress rehearsal for Milton Keynes.

No sooner had the Singtastic Singers finished than the Teignmouth Community Choir arrived for their weekly rehearsal, joined by several members of Ivybridge Community Community Choir as David had to cancel their Tuesday rehearsal because of his song-writing residency at Kew. Ellie joined the Alto section and had a great time!

We worked on Granny Galactica songs ready for our performances in November...93 Million Miles Away, Neutron Star, Big Bang, Take Care of the Earth and the first 37 bars of Bitter Tears, arranged by David that very afternoon. At the end of the evening we wowed Ellie and new choir members with Stargazing, not in Granny Galactica at present, but David's working on trying to slip it in somehow... though not for November, don't panic Leigh! I bet Ellie was exhausted when she reached her hotel. Mind you, she needed an early night because yet more was planned for Tuesday morning.

We picked Ellie up at the crack of dawn and whisked her, via the scenic route, from Teignmouth to St Mary's Catholic School, Buckfast where the whole school had assembled to sing to her. The children, aged five to eleven, who had performed in the summer Tremendous Journey concert, were delighted to see David and very disappointed that there wasn't time to sing all the songs. They were, of course, word-perfect and clearly still enjoyed singing David's songs.

All too soon it was time to take Ellie back to Teignmouth in time for her train back to London. The article should hopefully be in the 17th October edition - don't miss it!

Sue Blake

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