Distant Collisions of Dark Stars

For 2 organs, orchestra, choir, and electronics 

Premiered at the Göteborg International Organ festival, Sweden, Hagakyrkan, Oct 14, 2018 by:

Haga Motettkör, conducted by Ulrike Heider

Lundby Symphonic Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Björkdahl

Harald Svensson, piano 

Simon Halvarsson, percussion

Johan Björklund, percussion

Armand van Wijck, chromatic harmonica

Ilona Kubiaczyk-Adler, organ

Jacob Adler, organ

Ripples in the fabric of spacetime radiating from the merger of two black holes 1.5 billion light years away have recently been discovered with instruments capable of detecting signals one ten-thousandth the diameter of a proton. These instruments are interferometers. They merge beams of light to generate interference patterns, which reveal the presence of gravitational waves. We are listening to echoes of the most violent events in the universe. And so we celebrate with music, generating our own interference patterns of sound and looking for meaning in these patterns. We remember for a moment that our planet is but an infinitesimal speck of dust spinning in an incomprehensibly vast and dark sea.