David Haines

The song Mister Darwin is part of Kew's Great Plant Hunt project and as part of the Treasure Chest has been sent to all 22,300 primary and special schools in the UK ( www.greatplanthunt.org)

The original version of Mr Darwin won an award from the New York Times as best Darwin song ( http://wallacefund.info/en/mr-darwin-mr-wallace-mr-matthew-song-mr-haines)

In April 09 The Darwin Songs were performed as part of the first San Diego Science Festival Expo day and his special song for the festival was relayed throughout Balboa Park to around 50,000 people ( http://www.sdsciencefestival.com/kidzone.html - click on the "Play the SDSF Song" top left to hear it). At 11am scores of youngsters gathered in the Museum of Man to sing seven of the Darwin Songs:
Hedgehog, Bats - San Diego Children’s Choir
Habitats, Reptiles - Boys’ and Girls’ Choir of St Paul’s Cathedral
Cetaceans, Living Light - Canyoncrest Academy Choir
As a finale, the three choirs combined to sing David’s award-winning song Mister Darwin.

David's song "City of Dreams" in celebration of the Chicago Science Festival is now on their website at http://www.sciencechicago.com/content/city-dreams-david-haines

Cambridge’s Science Festival (that's Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA) gets bigger every year and David’s music has featured in all three! In previous years David and some lucky members of Teignmouth Community Choir have joined the North Cambridge Family Opera Chorus to perform his science oratorios Lifetime [2007] and Powers of Ten [2008]. This year, David was unable to spare the time to go to Cambridge to witness seven of his songs being sung by the North Cambridge Family Opera Festival Chorus as part of their patchwork science oratorio Naturally Selected - A Darwin Bicentennial Revue.

The performance featured songs by four different composers. The seven songs by David were: Mister Darwin, Mutate, Extremophiles, Lake, Taxonomy, Eras and Extinction. Extinction - chosen as the encore for the concert - is one of several songs in the Lifetime set that were collaboratively-written by David and participants in songwriting workshops. His co-writers in this case were children from Kenton Primary School in South Devon.

Naturally Selected was performed three times in various venues including Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Boston Museum of Science. Extracts were also performed at the opening ceremony for the festival in the grand surroundings of Cambridge City Hall.

From AskAttenborough: Your questions answered ( New Scientist website): "I've written songs about the science of life and evolution and plan to dedicate most of my composing career for at least the next few years to writing science oratorios that will popularise and celebrate science in song. What science subject or subjects would, in your opinion, most benefit from this sort of treatment? (asked by David Haines)"

"The pleasure would be to do something you couldn't do visually, to take a distant view of time so that you can actually talk about the way things evolve. The colonisation of the air would be a great subject for an oratorio: how the first multi-legged creatures suddenly found ways to fly. After insects came birds and reptiles, then mammals. I've got the copyright on the idea. But you can have it for a fiver!" (reply by David Attenborough)

New Space Songs
2009 was International year of Astronomy and 400 years since Galileo first pointed his telescope to the skies. David is about to embark on composing a brand new song celebrating the life and work of Galileo to complement seven others newly being made available from his work Granny Galactica. “There are certain thinkers in the history of science that stand head and shoulders above all the others for their passion, originality and sheer audacity of thought. Newton, Einstein, Curie and Galileo are obvious examples and I’m really looking forward to celebrating Galileo’s discoveries in my new song.” says David.

David has written two songs to go alongside Christopher Lloyd's book What On Earth Evolved? which relates the history of life on Earth through detailed chapters on 100 species, 50 prior to modern humans and 50 which have co-evolved with us. One song mentions the first 50, the other the second 50 and performed both at the book launch at the Royal Institution on 8th October.

The Royal Zoological Society of Scotland ( www.edinburghzoo.org.uk) has asked him to propose a project for Edinburgh Zoo for September 2010 on the theme of biodiversity.

In the first week of October, David accepted an invitation from The Royal Botanic Gardens to be Songwriter in Residence at Kew and at their other site, Wakehurst Place ( www.kew.org/visitor/aboutwp.html). The residency began with three intensive days interacting with scientists and touring all the RBG facilities at both sites, leading to the creation of a song giving an overall view of their work. The residency will be developed further during International Year of Biodiversity, 2010.

Read the article about David in New Scientist here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427306.800-david-haines-love-songs-to-science.html


David's science oratorio Powers of Ten will open the USA Science and Engineering Festival on the perfect Powers of Ten date - 10.10.10!

Powers of Ten is a sequence of songs that takes you on a journey from the human scale down to the smallest theoretical scale, the Planck distance, in a number about String Theory. On the way we encounter the Life that Lives on Man, Amoebae, Bacteria, Viruses, Atoms and Quarks in a series of tuneful, catchy songs that defy easy musical categorisation. The second half takes us on a journey in song up from the human scale covering Landscape, Tectonic Plates, Earth, Moon, Sun, Planets, Stars, Black Holes Galaxies and the Cosmos as a whole.

The festival will open in grand style with a chorus of around 200 children and adults from the Washington DC area performing in the glorious surroundings of the Elsie & Marvin Dekelboum Concert Hall at the the University of Maryland.

There will be further performances of songs from Powers of Ten on the National Mall (in the heart of city between the US Capitol and the Washington Monument) on the final day of the festival - 24th October.

Full details are on the Festival's website: www.usasciencefestival.org/2010festival/hostanevent/powersoften