Commissioned by: Lois Mattson
Instrumentation: Cello & Piano
Duration: 08:15
Performance Details: Premiered April 28 2013 at St Mary's Perivale, West London, UK

‘Towards 5-Sigma’, for cello & piano, was premiered on April 28th 2013 at St Mary’s, Perivale, West London UK - performed by the American cellist Lois Mattson, with the composer at the piano.

Taking as its inspiration the decades-long hunt by quantum physicists for the elusive ‘Higgs Boson’ sub-atomic particle, (some term it the ‘God-Particle’), the term ‘5-Sigma’ describes the ultimate level of proof required to confirm its discovery, based on a balance of probabilities. Scientists at CERN in Switzerland believed in 2012 that their striving has been rewarded...

Interestingly, this piece was written as a direct result of giving an interview to BBC Radio 4 News at Ten, concerning physicist Dr Lily Asquith’s idea to turn data from CERN’s Atlas Project into sound - this was all part of the search for the elusive Higgs Boson. I subsequently met Lily and some other scientists at UCL.

Listen to the BBC interview and watch performance video by clicking above.


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