Buffalo Science & Art Cabaret opens new season with ‘Ten Million Spaceships’

Buffalo’s popular Science & Art Cabaret will open its 11th season on Nov. 6 with “Ten Million Spaceships,” a night of poetry and science with Yun Wang, Caltech cosmologist and award-winning poet and translator of ancient Chinese poetry.

Established in fall 2009, the Buffalo Science & Art Cabaret is an event series that embraces connections between science and art, encouraging presenters and audiences to consider compelling themes from diverse perspectives.

“Ten Million Spaceships” will begin at 7 p.m. at The 9th Ward at Babeville, 341 Delaware Ave., Buffalo. There will be a cash bar.

Wang will perform readings and discuss the interplay between her scientific work and poetry. Music will be provided by The Vorechestra, which feathers Cathy Carfagna, keyboard; Biff Henrich, guitar; Patrick Heyden, percussion; Dave Meinzer, guitar; Gary Nickard, bass and electronics; Jeanette Sperhac, violin; and Patty Wallace, electronic synthesizers.

“The Science & Art Cabaret has always been about seeing the common ground between scientific and artistic ways of thinking,” says co-founder Will Kinney, professor of physics, College of Arts and Sciences. “Few leading scientists embody this better than my colleague and friend, Yun Wang, who has managed a rare fusion of her work as a research cosmologist and poet. We are thrilled to have her here for an unusual single-speaker cabaret for the first event of our 11th season, along with the return of cabaret favorite The Vorechestra.”

Adds cabaret co-founder John Massier, visual arts curator at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center: “After dozens of events where we’ve brought together so many scientists and creative individuals, and their varied perspectives on a proposed theme, it’s unique that this event will be the most intentional blended hybrid of science and art that we’ve yet presented.”

“A poetry-writing scientist backed by an alternative and dynamic orchestra — pardon me, vorechestra — is a bit of a culmination of this ongoing program,” Massier says. “What it shares with previous cabarets is the spontaneity of not knowing exactly how it will all play out, but if the past is any indication, it will offer up a mixture of the wonderful and the sublime.”

The Science & Art Cabaret is sponsored by Hallwalls, the UB College of Arts and Sciences, the Buffalo Museum of Science, Babeville and Erie County Arts & Cultural Funding. In addition to Kinney and Massier, co-founders include Gary Nickard, UB clinical associate professor of art, and Douglas Borzynski, who was then at the Buffalo Museum of Science.

A native of Gaoping, a small town near Zunyi in Guizhou Province in China, Wang came to the U.S. for graduate school in 1985 and is now a cosmologist and senior research scientist at Caltech. She plays a leading role in several planned space missions to explore the universe. In 2012, she was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society for her leadership in dark energy research.

Wang is the author of two poetry books (“The Book of Totality,” Salmon Poetry, 2015, and “The Book of Jade,” Story Line Press, 2002, winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize), two poetry chapbooks (“Horse by the Mountain Stream,” Word Palace Press, 2016, and “The Carp,” Bull Thistle Press, 1994) and a book of poetry translations (“Dreaming of Fallen Blossoms: Tune Poems of Su Dong-Po,” White Pine Press, 2019).

Her poems and translations of classical Chinese poetry have been published in numerous literary journals, including The Kenyon Review and Prairie Schooner.