Audiophiles Hear Hear! Close Encounters with Music’s “Conversations with…” Series Groundbreaking Acoustician Edgar Choueiri Reveals Revolutionary Recording Sounds of the Future
“Choueiri belongs to a distinctly modern type: the engineer-aesthete.”—The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik
Audiophiles will enjoy the sounds of Edgar Choueiri demonstrating how the brain can be tricked into believing it is experiencing a live performance, when it is actually a recording being heard. An avid acoustician, Choueiri is a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Princeton University and head of the school’s 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics Lab. On May 22 he brings his binaural audio set-up to Time & Space Limited’s art space in Hudson, NY to discuss the fruits of a decade of development, application, and refinement of this revolutionary, groundbreaking system of recording that captures lifelike 3D audio in picture-perfect fidelity. Binaural recording systems are unique because they emulate the workings of the human head. Prepare to be fooled, says Choueiri: “You can hear a bird flying over your head. You’ll hear a whisper in one ear.”
“Making Waves—Sounds of the Future” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season.
“Conversations With…” has presented such notable speakers as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow Judith Zaimont; baritone and actor Benjamin Luxon; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker; scholar, performer and multimedia artist Robert Winter; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; Metropolitan Opera costume designer Charles Caine and Metropolitan Museum curator of musical instruments Ken Moore.
TICKET INFORMATION:
Tickets for this event are $15 and are available on the Close Encounters website—www.cewm.org or at 800-843-0778. Light refreshments following the presentation are included.
BIO:
Edgar Choueiri is a professor of applied physics at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department of Princeton University and the associated faculty at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Program in Plasma Physics. He is also director of Princeton University’s Engineering Physics Program and chief scientist at the university’s Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Lab, a center of research in the field of advanced spacecraft propulsion. He is also the director of Princeton’s 3D Audio and Applied Acoustics (3D3A) Lab. An avid audiophile and acoustician, over the last decade, he has dedicated his time to the development, application, and refinement of a revolutionary, groundbreaking system of audio recording that captures lifelike 3D audio in picture-perfect fidelity. The author of more than 160 scientific publications and encyclopedia articles on plasma rockets, plasma physics, space physics and applied mathematics, he is Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the recipient of many awards and honors including a knighthood. He has been an invited speaker on more than 55 occasions at symposia and leading institutions in the USA, Russia, China, Japan, Poland, Italy, Lebanon, Turkey, UAE, and many countries in Western Europe. He is the recipient of a number of awards and honors and was recently elected president of the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society, whose members include hundreds of scientists working on plasma propulsion for spacecraft in more than 15 countries. Dr. Choueiri was selected by NASA in 2004 as the winner of a competition to lead a team of NASA and academic researchers on a 3-year research project to develop a high-power plasma rocket system intended for the robotic and human exploration of the Moon and Mars.
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic director Yehuda Hanani puts composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time: Paul Schoenfield, Robert Beaser, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists Adam Neiman, Roman Rabinovich, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman, Itamar Zorman and Erin Keefe; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein and Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Jennifer Rivera, Kelley O’Connor, and Lucille Beer; the Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, and Dover quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.
THE 2015-16 CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC SEASON CALENDAR
CONCERTS AT THE MAHAIWE
Grand Piano Quartets–Brahms and Dvořák
Saturday, October 24, 6 PM
Walter Ponce, piano; Ara Gregorian, violin
Xiao-Dong Wang, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello
“Dually” Noted: Music for Four Hands
Saturday, December 12, 6 PM
Soyeon Kate Lee and Ran Dank, piano
J.S. Bach & Sons: Legitimate and Otherwise
Saturday, March 19, 6 PM
Acronym Baroque String Band
James Austin Smith, oboe; Yehuda Hanani, cello
“Fiddler OFF the Roof”
Sunday April 17, 3 PM
Michele Levin, piano; Paul Green, clarinet; Alex Richardson, tenor
Sarah McElravy, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello
The Art of the String Quartet
Saturday, May 14, 6 PM
The Dover String Quartet
GALA: “Music That Shook the World!”
Saturday, June 11, 6 PM
Michael Chertock, piano; Yehonatan Berick, violin
Yehuda Hanani, cello; Special Guest Narrator, tba
CONVERSATIONS WITH…
Curator Ken Moore
Inside the Met’s Instrument Collection
Sunday, November 15, 2 PM | The Mount, Lenox, MA
Professor and Inventor Edgar Choueiri
Making Waves | Sounds of the Future
(New lifelike 3D audio system in picture-perfect fidelity)
Sunday, May 22, 2 PM | Basilica Hudson, Hudson, NY
SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
Mid-Winter Fireside Concert
“Some Enchanted Evening”
Saturday, February 20, 6 PM, | Ventfort Hall, Lenox, MA
Mischa Bouvier, baritone; Yegor Shevtsov, piano
ANNUAL BLANTYRE LUNCHEON MUSICALE BENEFIT
Sunday, May 1, 12:30 PM | Blantyre, Lenox, MA
