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These three took the stage last Saturday (April 21) in the U.S. premiere of Lifetime: Songs of Life & Evolution at the Cambridge Science Festival, along with dozens of other families, with a mission to spread the good word on evolution.
These families, members of the North Cambridge Family Opera Company, sang a kid-friendly score written by British composer David Haines.
The 90-minute performance opens dramatically with a tribute to the origins of life, featuring vibrato-laden adult harmonies layered with younger voices. A slide show with lyrics and children's drawings accompanies the score.
As the youngest choristers in the front sway to the music, clutching the edges of their T-shirts blazoned with the Lifetime logo (primates gradually evolving to a singing man), the company delves into a primer on the science of evolution, celebrating adaptations such as bioluminescence and hibernation.
In a series of somewhat catchy songs tracing our evolution from amoeba to Homo sapiens, Haines' lyrics confront species-ism head on: "Don't you dismiss, this protist ... What's so great about being the same shape every day?" In one of many such feats, they fit unwieldy terminology, such as "Entamoeba histolytica," into rhyming couplets. ("Don't allow entry to this amoeba," the lyrics warn. "You will get dysentery, maybe fever.")
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Then there is the choreography: In a song about the migration of swallows, the younger kids flap about the stage, then crouch down when the music turns to hedgehogs. The adult soloist for the segment on fungi shimmies behind the microphone, decked out in a red and white mushroom-top hat.
There are tributes to scientific thinkers like Richard Dawkins ("I'm a selfish gene and I'm programmed to survive") and the occasional evolutionary insight ("Water does for trees what my blood does for me"). The performance concludes with "Four Billion Years," an appeal for humans to honor our evolutionary heritage by preserving diversity.
Though Haines has no formal scientific training, he says he's been intrigued by science all his life, and wrote an oratorio on the universe several years ago. Now focusing in on the life sciences, Haines says the subject makes him feel "spiritual." He considers "Lake," a piece in Lifetime about the evolution of cichlid fish in African lakes, to be "one of the most passionate, romantic songs I've ever written."
Haines began writing the Lifetime score in 2004, as a community project involving thirteen local schools in his native southwest England. When MIT Museum director John Durant asked him to bring the act to Cambridge's first annual science festival, Haines was thrilled to perform in what he considers a scientist's paradise: "That MIT should host is a dream come true for me," he says.
It's not clear how many of the scientific details the youngest singers or spectators can absorb, but this choral version of Schoolhouse Rock is meant to excite more than educate, says Haines. He sees the show as an "opportunity to impart enthusiasm for science through music."
Still, the emphasis on having fun doesn't prevent a case of stage fright. Outside before the show begins, the five year old's father tries to set him at ease. "We have to make sure that people who hear us get their money's worth," he says. "See why that's a joke, son? Because the concert is free!"
The group will repeat their performance in Cambridge schools on Sunday, April 29.
Ishani Ganguli
mail@the-scientist.com
Images: Art about evolution by children in the Lifetime chorus.
Links within this article:
M. Wenner," The Amygdaloids: Scientists who rock out," The Scientist, March 30, 2007
http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/53043
Cambridge Science Festival
http://www.cambridgesciencefestival.org
North Cambridge Family Opera Company
http://www.familyopera.com
David Haines
http://www.zyworld.com/gazing/DAVID%20HAINES%20WEBSITE/DavidHainesHome.htm
The Institute for Genomic Research Entamoeba histolytica Genome Project
http://www.tigr.org/tdb/e2k1/eha1
I Ganguli, "Getting on top, genetically," The Scientist, October 18, 2005.
http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/22802
[Comment posted 2007-05-22 14:04:31]
LINK
[Comment posted 2007-05-05 17:23:18]
[Comment posted 2007-05-04 00:42:37]
"Lifetime" exists first of all as a piece of music and a successful one at that, in my opinion. Other people must have agreed because the audiences grew over the course of the three performances, and the last one was standing room only. Some people attended more than once because they enjoyed it so much. Some of the melodies are catchy, and some are so beautiful I choked up every time I heard them.
The lyrics address various scientific ideas and principles, sometimes with humor, sometimes not. Either way, they impart useful information in a memorable fashion, which conventional science instruction doesn't always manage to do. Even if the children don't understand everything now, they may well have a flash of recognition later when their education reaches the subjects they sang about, and I bet all the adults learned a thing or two as well.
I don't think I'd describe "Lifetime" as having "a mission to spread the good word on evolution". If I had to boil it down to one phrase, I'd say it's a celebration of the wonders of creation. Those wonders include evolution, how our world changed from a dead place to one teaming with all sorts of life and the fascinating ways various creatures have evolved to deal with the conditions they live in.
Instead of sneering, I'd encourage all of you to be scientists and do a little research. The YouTube links at www.familyopera.org are to performances of some of the songs in England. There is also a very poor quality recording of the first three minutes of the performance of "Lake" at MIT at Lake.">LINK If you're intrigued and want to hear more, you will eventually be able to get a professionally recorded DVD of that MIT performance from the North Cambridge Family Opera Company.
Thanks to the denigrators for the reminder to be more thoughtful myself and not jump to immediate conclusions based on inadequate information. You can miss out on good stuff by writing it off too quickly.
[Comment posted 2007-05-02 20:07:09]
[Comment posted 2007-04-30 04:26:51]
[Comment posted 2007-04-28 04:25:31]
The God of the Old Testament, however, is no ￂﾓmalevolent bully.ￂﾔ He loved the world so much that He sent His only Son. Why? Not only to be the Lamb of God, typified by all the Old Testament sacrifices, so that sin could be washed away, but also to surround with His own perfect righteousness those who humble themselves. It is not enough merely to be cleansed of sin, wonderful as that blessing is. We need also to be confirmed in righteousness. How? Adam had flunked long before, and we in him. Jesus, however, the last Adam and the God of the Old Testament in human flesh, passed with flying colors! All in Jesus pass in Him! To put it another way, He is THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS! There is even room at the foot of the cross for God-slanderers like Dawkins who repent.ￂﾔ
[Comment posted 2007-04-28 00:44:12]
But seriously, this is unreal!
"...with a mission to spread the good word on evolution."
Mission? "Good word"? That's for all intents and purposes the same as "Gospel"! And there's no real "good word" when it comes to evolution -- things just happen, or they don't. That's all it comes down to.
"The 90-minute performance opens dramatically with a tribute to the origins of life..."
A tribute? You give tributes to people, not things. A tribute is the reciting of praise. The evolutionary origin of life is that the right chemicals just happened to come together. Chemicals don't care about tributes, and there's no reason to praise anything that just happened for no particular reason.
"...celebrating adaptations such as bioluminescence and hibernation."
Do adaptations care if they are celebrated? Will the papparazzi surround fireflies and black bears? What's to celebrate about some genes just happening to mutate in ways that just happened to be useful?
"Haines' lyrics confront species-ism head on: "Don't you dismiss, this protist ... What's so great about being the same shape every day?""
What, now we're not supposed to regard ourselves as superior to one-celled organisms? Will it become illegal to use antibiotics? Does anybody think any of them give a rip about anything?
"...Haines has no formal scientific training...Haines says the subject makes him feel "spiritual.""
Yes, because evolution (in the fullest or commonly-understood sense) is really the myth at the heart of a new religion. It's good to see it finally come out in the open. If scientists would stick to definitions of evolution like "Change in the ratios of alleles in gene pools," there wouldn't be any argument and no call for such evOngelization.