BCAM, EHU and ELHUYAR bring the science of sound to stages across the Basque Country

• The Basque Government backs ‘The Science of Sound’, a project that brings together music, mathematics and artificial intelligence. The initiative has received funding in the first round of the Ezagutza Zabaltzen grants
• The project combines concerts with theatrical narration, talks and a self-playing piano to uncover the mathematics of music

Soinuaren Zientzia / The Science of Sound begins with seemingly simple questions: why does a chord sound good? Can a machine play the piano the way a person does? What mathematics lies behind a melody or a musical performance?

The project is a joint initiative of the Basque Center for Applied Mathematics (BCAM), the University of the Basque Country (EHU) and Elhuyar. Its principal investigator is Luca Fanelli, Ikerbasque Research Professor at the EHU, associate researcher at BCAM and also principal investigator of the consolidated research group Harmonic Analysis & PDE (HAPDE), funded by the Basque Government. Fanelli also leads BCAM’s unit within the project. Osane Oruetxebarria leads the EHU unit and Edurne Gastón the Elhuyar unit.

The initiative will bring the science and mathematics of music to concert halls and towns across the Basque Country through a combination of live music, theatrical narration, science communication and technology.

One of its main strands is a series of four concerts with theatrical narration, in Basque and Spanish, with scripts written by Fanelli himself. The first, Order and Chaos, was presented in September at the Sociedad Bilbaína, based on Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, performed by the trio led by Rubén Reina, violinist with the RTVE Orchestra, with Eduardo Frías on piano.

On 29 October, A Voice, a Thousand Voices comes to Ondarroa, performed entirely in Basque, with violinist Marianna Atria playing works by Ysaÿe and Bach for solo violin. On 30 October the show will be presented again at the Bilbao Conservatoire, in Basque and Spanish, and will mark the ‘opening shot’ of Zientzia Astea 2026, an initiative run by the EHU’s Vice-Rectorate for Transfer and Internationalisation, which this year celebrates its 25th edition under the theme ‘art and science’.

The series will close on 21 November at the Sociedad Bilbaína with The Distance Between Two Voices, starring Ibai Cenador Velasco on horn and Mario Lerena on piano.

The project also features two guests who link these activities to some of the most current areas of music research and innovation. María de Santos, of Yamaha España, will showcase the possibilities of the Disklavier piano, which can record a performance with great precision and then reproduce the actual movement of the keys and pedals with nobody sitting at the keyboard. Xavier Serra, of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, will discuss how computers and artificial intelligence systems can analyse, understand and generate music.

The science talks will round out the programme. They will cover, among other topics, the historical search for a mathematical order in sound, from Pythagoras to Bach; how the notes of a scale are distributed so that they sound in tune with one another (the problem of musical temperament); and the physics that explains how a sound wave is created, travels and is perceived.

These activities will be led by Andoni García, Osane Oruetxebarria and Judith Rivas, of the University of the Basque Country (EHU), and will pay particular attention to towns outside the provincial capitals and to areas where science outreach is usually less available.

With Soinuaren Zientzia / The Science of Sound, BCAM, EHU and Elhuyar aim to use music as a gateway to mathematics, physics, technology and artificial intelligence, bringing scientific research to new audiences through an experience in which science and culture share the stage.