The really big picture
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Local Opinion Editor
11/03/09 3:33 PM EST
There’s nothing like looking at the cosmos to get your puny little mind off your not-important-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things problems, especially when you are staring at imploding stars, frolicking galaxies and parts of the universe never before been seen by human eyes.
Last night, I attended the Kennedy Center’s world premier of “Cosmic Reflection,” which included a delightful prelude by composer Nolan Gasser played by the superb American Brass Quintet, and Symphony No. 4, Opus 29 “The Inextingushable,” by the late Carl Nielsen, played by the Boston University Symphony Orchestra.
The lush symphonic score, which the student musicians played with youthful exuberance, was accompanied by a video of absolutely stunning photographs taken by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope, launched on June 11, 2008. Built by a partnership of particle and astrophysicists from the U.S. and several other countries, the space lab has been peering at the universe across the entire electromagnetic spectrum and revolutionizing our knowledge of the cosmos.
The musical accompaniment to the video by the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center alternately invoked the pluckiest little atoms to the violent collapse of stars in the constantly moving, unimaginably vast universe we live in. An uncountable number of stars looked like tiny grains of sand on an unending black beach.
The narrative accompanying the video, read by actor Carey Harrison, hit the only sour note of the evening. The orchestra’s volume made the overly ponderous script even more difficult to follow, which come to think of it was probably a good thing. But that minor criticism doesn’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy cosmos.
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