Yo-Yo Ma performs a section of Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel,” with images provided by the James Webb telescope.
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TRANSCRIPT
What are you going to play today?
It's a piece by an Estonian composer, which he wrote in 1978, and he was going through a difficult time trying to find a different way of composing, and he was looking for for a simpler style.
For example, the piano part you have bell like sounds.
The cello part really both asks and sometimes answers questions.
The piece is called Mirror in Mirrors.
And so if you think of putting an object between two mirrors, what do you get?
You get to infinity.
Have you played it before?
Well, this is a piece that we played actually in Paris at UNESCO, which is right next door to the European Space Agency.
The European Space Agency made a lot of the equipment that is on the James Webb telescope.
And so we played it displaying images that the James Webb telescope captured as a statement about the infinitude of the universe.
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