Astrophysics, hard rock, and Interlochen: Student group plays conference in eastern

The day after this rehearsal, these musicians — mostly students at Interlochen Center for the Arts — will fly to Armenia, to play at Starmus, an international festival of science and the arts.

This six-person ensemble includes Interlochen Arts Academy students, a recent graduate, and a professional drummer who has come in from Nashville.

The band calls itself “Syzygy,” a name thought up by Jorge González Diez Gutiérrez, who plays keys in the group. It’s an astronomical term for when three celestial objects, like the sun, earth and moon, are in a straight line.

A good choice for playing a festival with a heavy focus on astrophysics.

Starmus began in 2011, and attracts some of the biggest minds and stars in both music and science. It was co-founded by Brian May, famous as lead guitarist of the band Queen and himself an astrophysicist.

Past events have featured the Apollo astronauts and Stephen Hawking, along with Nobel laureates and rock stars.

These student musicians got the call in January inviting them to play in Armenia this year. And they got to work.

“We started writing basically an album’s worth of material in the last six months,” said Case Fadell, a junior at Interlochen Arts Academy who plays guitar in the group.

They had a quick preview performance right before summer break, but most of the songs they haven’t played in front of an audience.

“Our first proper concert is going to be in front of 5 to 10,000 people, which is not nerve-wracking at all,” Fadell said.

Their teacher, Marc Lacuesta, is tremendously proud.

“It’s really gratifying to see these kids fly,” he said.

Getting ready for something like this — and just being part of a band — is fun, an enormous opportunity, and also educationally valuable.

“I think it’s a great opportunity to figure out how to get your ideas across to someone else without stepping on their ideas, treating them with respect and letting them know they’re appreciated even if you don’t use their ideas,” Lacuesta said. “Those are all super useful things.”

The band members, meanwhile, are just excited to get to play their music, see Armenia, and celebrate the connection between science and the arts.

“A lot of the most amazing advancements in scientific history and just history in general have been made through human passion and creativity,” said Kat Stockton, one of the group’s two vocalists.

As for how a hard rock concert will sit with a group of the world’s leading scientific minds?

“I have no idea,” she said. “I believe in a crumb of manifestation. I’d like to think it’ll go over well.”