The Falling Tree Collaborative

The Falling Tree Collaborative concert series is an ongoing collaboration between scientists and composers with the goal to increase scientific literacy of the public through a novel combination of scientific presentation and musical performance. This concert series is designed to bring the sounds of the proverbial “tree falling in a forest” to new audiences and explores themes of climate change, sustainable food production, and general wonder of our shared natural world with a special focus on systems involving plants. The first performance featured the work of four MSU plant Biologists (Kadeem Gilbert, Krista Isaacs, Phoebe Zarnetske, Berkley Walker) with contemporary music from four Michigan Composers (Libby Meyer, Lisa Coons, Lyn Goeringer, Spencer Arias). Most recently it has now added two additional scientists based out of Pullman, WA Andrei Smertenko and Cecilia Rodriguez-Furlan. Below you will find the iterations composed by Spencer Arias. The next stage of this project is to increase visibility through programing of these works. The only requirement for programming is that the science research must be verbally communicated to the audience. We will provide either a written program note, or we have recorded videos of the scientists presenting on their work which you can share with audiences.