solo (2018) for cello and bass

listen to Cecilia and Jeff’s performance on soundcloud

in spring 2018, i was fortunate to be accepted to uni of pittsburgh’s artist in residence program hosted by the astrophysics and cosmology department. for this residency, i collaborated with particle physicist Sergey Frolov. my job in this residency program was to learn about Professor Frolov’s work and compose a piece inspired by his research on non-Abelian particles.

The structure of SOLO is inspired by the delicate process of creating Majorana fermions (a type of non Abelian particle), man-made particles that exist within ten thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. The composition begins with an imagined space being systematically chilled. The cellist and bassist represent the superconducting nanowires used to create these particles. The strings are immersed in powerful magnetic fields, until a Majorana emerges at near zero energy. The strongest inspiration for the piece came when Sergey Frolov described Majorana fermions as a Zen particle. They are without charge, without mass, without energy, without spin. “It is as close to nothing as anything can be,” explains Frolov. Like Zen, these particles are easier to define by the things that they are not. This struck a significant chord within Tipp, as the concept of nothing is a central tenant of Zen Buddhism. Solo is not only a narrative exploration of the creation of Majoranas, but also an exploration of nothingness.

SOLO was composed for Cecilia Caughman and Jeff Weston and was premiered April 13th, 2018 at the University of Pittsburgh.

score can be purchased here