k-w symphony

I’ve made it clear before that I’m a big fan of the work Edwin Outwater is doing as music director of the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. When I met the young Californian two and a half years ago I asked whether he had any projects cooking with the region’s other outstanding eccentrics, whether at RIM or Perimeter Institute. He didn’t then, but he wasted little time. Last month Outwater and Raymond Laflamme, the director of the Institute for Quantum Computing (which is run jointly by Perimeter and the UPDATE: actually not run by anyone except the University of Waterloo), put on an elaborate and meticulously prepared concert to explain ideas in quantum physics using music.

Faithful readers, if any, have perhaps been wondering since last autumn what on earth the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony sounded like when Edwin Outwater led it through a new piece by the Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry that required the musicians to listen to their own hearts through stethoscopes. Now, thanks to the CBC’s Concerts on Demand website, you can hear it, along with the rest of an entertaining program, here.

Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry has written a piece based on each musician’s heartbeat