Soprasymmetry IV

Please read ONLY ONE of the following:

1.The Higgs boson, sometimes called the Higgs particle, is an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics produced by the quantum excitation of the Higgs field, one of the fields in particle physics theory. In the Standard Model, the Higgs particle is a massive scalar boson with zero spin, even (positive) parity, no electric charge, and no colour charge that couples to (interacts with) mass. It is also very unstable, decaying into other particles almost immediately upon generation. A key feature of the Higgs field is that it takes less energy for the field to have a non-zero value than a zero value, unlike all other known fields, therefore, the Higgs field has a non-zero value (or vacuum expectation) everywhere. The presence of the field, now confirmed by experimental investigation, explains why some fundamental particles have mass, despite the symmetries controlling their interactions implying that they should be massless. -Wikipedia

(OR)

2. The whole thing seemed vaguely ridiculous. But then, dreams often are. Here I was on the threshold of Dreamland. Anyway, what could I do? I'd come here. Now I was here. Beyond the signs, there was nothing. More desert. I walked up to the line and looked over. After days of strange profusion, it was almost a relief to see something so inaccessible to knowledge, such a complete refusal to be anything but an absence. The thought I had was that I had finally reached the frontier, that when we ran out of west in America we locked the idea of it away in places like this, blanks on the map that could never be charted, where who knew what monsters might exist. And sure, I thought about flying saucers. But mostly I thought about nothing, about the not-answer that lay beneath even my ability to ask questions. I remembered the sign I'd seen: Here it is. And how hundreds of miles away and in a different desert, what was left of Route 66 still ran westward, from Arizona into California and across the Mojave to Los Angeles, to the place where it ended at the Santa Monica Pier, by the Ferris wheel on the edge of the sea. -Brian Phillips, "Lost Highway"

Musicians:

Nikki Einfeld, soprano

Anna Presler, violin

Liana Bérubé, violin

Phyllis Kamrin, viola

Leighton Fong, cello

Michel Taddei, double bass

Matilda Hofman, conductor

Program: On the Threshold of Dreamland, 32nd Season (2024-2025)

Audio: Zach Miley