Confronting the Vacuum

Mark Pevsner and Melissa Franklin

Tuesday, February 9, 2016, 7-8 pm

Bartos Theatre

MIT LIST Visual Arts Center | 20 Ames St., Cambridge, MA 02139

Composer Mark Pevsner and Harvard physicist Melissa Franklin are both interested in how ideas fulfill themselves out of emptiness. Franklin investigates fundamental forces and elementary particles, with particular attention to fields. She contemplates the distinction between nothing and something. Pevsner structures his compositions against a backdrop of emptiness. His musical ideas, by creating their own language and vocabulary, are designed to coalesce into a "something". 

Their conversation was mind expanding and featured a performance with Mark Pevsner, piano and Sonja Tengblad, soprano. Selections from Pevsner's song cycle The Four Seasons included the world premiere of Herbsttag.