By Chelsea Rademacher

Please respond to the following questions:

Yes	No
□	□	Do you know that a conjunction’s function is hooking up words, phrases, and clauses?
□	□	Can you name the 50 states in alphabetical order from memory?
□	□	Are you able to read these words because you know your ABCs?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, chances are you have a song stuck in your head now. That’s because music is a unique educational tool — one that spans time, cultures, and nationalities. It’s also why climate scientist and oceanographer Elizabeth Maroon has teamed up with the Mead Witter School of Music to turn El Niño into an earworm.

What makes El Niño important enough to rise to the level of a Schoolhouse Rock analogy? “El Niño is the temperature in the tropical Pacific,” Maroon offers as a refresher. “It’s important because the temperature down there influences weather everywhere — globally.”

From droughts and heatwaves to monsoons and floods, small variations in temperature can have monumental impacts. But the ripple effects of El Niño don’t need to be a surprise; that’s where Maroon’s research comes in. As a faculty member in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) and a core member of the Nelson Institute’s Center for Climatic Research, Maroon studies climate predictability. Just as we can use climate models to predict the weather — What’s the overnight low tonight? Is it going to rain on my parade? — we can use climate models to predict El Niño a few months to a year or two into the future.

“You can make a forecast for El Niño just like you would a weather model forecast,” Maroon explains, “you just run the climate model longer.” (Of course, weather models don’t have oceans in them, so it’s a good thing Maroon knows a thing or two about oceans.)

She pulled a community climate prediction data set for 2023 and analyzed its forecasts. This is where the connection to music begins: “This data set is special in that it’s an ensemble prediction system,” Maroon explains. That means running multiple forecasts all starting from the same observations; in this case, the dataset has 20 forecasts. Each varies slightly at the very first time — “we’re talking one times 10 to the negative 14th Kelvin (1×10-14K). That’s all it takes for the nonlinearities in the atmosphere and the ocean to start to diverge and to give us a wider look at the possible future climates.”

A classically trained pianist, Maroon drew a connection between an ensemble forecast and an ensemble of musicians.

She remembered some work that fellow researchers had done in sonification, or turning numbers and data into notes and sound. To sonify the El Niño forecasts, Maroon hired AOS undergraduate Hunter Glassford, trained him to work with a sonification tool in the programming language Python, and got to work.

“Sonification maps numbers to a frequency in Hertz,” Maroon says. They’re taking it a step further and mapping the numbers to musical notes: A, B, C, D, E, F, G. With traditional sonification, some frequencies might wind up in between notes. For example, A is 440 Hz and B is 493.883 Hz; a data point that maps to 450 Hz would be too high for A, but too low for B (and just a hair flat for B-flat, if we’re getting specific).

While exploring the sonification with Glassford, Maroon also worked with Johannes Wallmann, professor of music and director of jazz studies in the School of Music, to explore climate science with a School of Music student. Maroon and Wallmann hired Ben Ferris, who is a composer, double bassist, and doctoral student, to create an original composition around El Niño, its forecasts, and its interpretation.

“Ben came up with like a lot of creative ways to map the science concepts in a completely original piece,” Maroon says, “And he provided feedback on the direction for the sonification.”

As Glassford mapped numbers to notes, Ferris suggested trying out different scales that he had used in his composition. For the sonification, the team eventually landed on B Lydian (which sounds like this).

Ferris brought in the UW Bridge Ensemble who are turning the science into sound. To demonstrate the sonification, they selected six members from the climate forecast ensemble and sonified them for six instruments in the UW Bridge Ensemble—two violins, one viola, one cello, one piano and one double bass. In addition to the six forecasts that Maroon is representing, she selected a trumpet to represent the observations, what really happened, the “truth.”

Glassford’s final sonifications, as well as Ferris’s new composition, will world premiere live in the Hamel Music Center performed by the UW Bridge Ensemble, during a free event hosted during UW–Madison Earth Fest on April 21 at 7:30 pm in the Hamel Music Center.

So, what does an El Niño forecast sound like? Think back to the data set that generated these notes. The trumpet starts on a single note—representing what really happened in November 2023. A violin joins in on the same note. The trumpet and violin then independently go higher (warmer) or lower (colder), depending on what really happened or what the forecast thought would happen. Now imagine six forecasts playing at once. All of them start on the same first note as the trumpet, but then all the instruments gradually spread out into different melodies.

“The forecasts do not exactly follow the observations, and you can hear that dissonance,” Maroon says. “The further you get away from where you started, the more spread there is, and the more uncertainty that you have in your forecast.”

You’ll be able to hear El Niño and understand its forecasting because of Maroon’s National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, which is funding both oceanographic research and both student contributors. CAREER Awards are grants that support promising young faculty who show great potential as innovative role models in both research and education — the two areas that the grants focus on.

For Maroon, Earth Signals is the education component; the research half gets further into her academic background of oceanography, specifically looking at how the mountain ranges on the ocean floor affect climate variability.

This is the first year of the grant’s five-year funding. If all goes according to plan, by 2030, Maroon will have supported dozens of students in exploring and researching climate science, honing real-world skills, and getting a one-of-a-kind experience to list on their resumes. She’ll also have helped bring five original compositions to life, offering the public new ways to understand and engage with climate science and oceanography.

“This is going to be a very different way to communicate science,” Maroon says. “Scientific literacy matters, and if we can use music to reach folks who don’t usually think about scientific topics, that’s a win. A better-informed populace is going to be able to understand the scientific premise of things that matter to society.”

Composer’s Statement by Ben Ferris

As an artist, it is a treat to work with scientists, especially folks doing research in climate change, a pressing issue that has broad and devastating effects on the whole world. For this composition, I wanted to look at sonification of musical elements beyond pitch and rhythm. I ended up using dissonance as the element to best communicate with the audience and musicians the feeling of tension between predictions and reality, the discomfort we might feel when things don’t go as we might expect.

I also used improvisation as a large part of the musical composition to sonify the idea of predictions in real-time with the musicians. As a concept for improvised sections, we draw on the music that we’ve already played, but develop it based on our feelings in the moment, which are in turn impacted by the choices of the other musicians. To me, this felt like a great way to experience the scientific processes involved in predictions-lots of inputs impacting what might happen.

Turner Gray, a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in Tuba Performance and Wind Conducting, has revitalized the La Salle University Pep Band as its new director. Under his full-time leadership, the band now energizes basketball games and special events, bringing music and spirit back to the La Salle campus after a three-year hiatus.

There has been some type of pep band presence at La Salle over the years, but not always in a full-time capacity. The band had been dormant on campus since 2021, and in 2024 Gray was the first person to be brought on in a full-time role for the director position. With that responsibility comes some challenges as well as obstacles, Gray said.

“Working in this role full-time has really given me the ability to devote the necessary time, effort, and resources into building this program into one that represents the university and the city of Philadelphia in the best way possible,” Gray said. “We do not have a music program here at La Salle, so the students who choose to participate in the band are doing so out of pure desire. Despite not offering a music program, my vision for this program stems from my desire for students to learn how to be the best musicians they can.”

Gray’s vision for the La Salle band is simple, he said: Create and cultivate a program that allows students the ability to continue music after high school while representing the university in a positive and exciting light.

“I envision a band that is filled with curious, engaged, and excited students that participate in music for the love of it,” Gray said. “When starting a program essentially from scratch, it’s easy to decide what direction you want it to go in. I believe in students also having a say in that direction–a collaborative effort to achieving success both on and off of campus.”

Based in Philadelphia, La Salle is a member of the Atlantic 10 Conference. The La Salle Explorers played in the Tom Gola Arena as their main home stadium from 1998 to 2024, and now play in the newly renovated John Glaser Arena. The new arena is a 3,000-seat multi-purpose venue which opened October 24, 2024.

The new arena has put the band front and center with the athletes, Gray said. The band occupies the first few rows of the student section, with the drum set player being directly on the baseline next to one of the baskets. It gives the band some much needed visibility and “inserts us into the game in a much better position than they had in the old arena,” Gray said.

Gray believes the band can have a direct outcome on sporting events. The band being so up close and personal with the players helps reinforce the atmosphere fans come to expect from a college basketball game, he said, and simple tunes bring the fans together to cheer, sing, and make noise during close-game situations.

“Lots of folks would shake my hand or pat me on the back as they leave the arena, telling me ‘thanks for being here,’ ‘it’s so good to have the band again,’ or ‘the band sounds awesome,’ and it’s true, they do sound awesome,” Gray said. “There is some exciting energy surrounding the La Salle Pep Band–the students are excited to be here and are eager to grow as musicians and people.”

He also thinks that–maybe unintentionally–the arena features an acoustical design that heavily benefits having a band present. Even with a sold-out crowd, the band cuts through the crowd noise clearly, he said.

“My parents were texting me throughout the home opener saying they could hear the band on the TV broadcast when we were playing, which was pretty cool,” Gray said. “Small but mighty, we are loudly and proudly representing at the basketball games.”

Membership in the band is all-inclusive for any La Salle student, staff, or faculty member, and the ensemble operates with an open instrumentation with no audition required.

Gray wanted to have as many students involved however they could participate, even if it meant a different instrumental makeup than most pep bands. The result has been “close to what you typically see in most collegiate pep bands.”

“I believe that, especially when starting a program with zero students, it is important to open the group to all, evaluate what you have to work with, and then go,” Gray said. “Everyone is capable of learning, and anyone who comes in with an open mind and the desire to be involved is someone I want to teach. I have been telling students here on campus that if you’ve played for five minutes, five years, or anything in between, we want you in the band.”

Gray believes that your ability to play an instrument might not directly translate to your day job, but what will translate are the skills you learn as a result of participation in the band: collaboration, time management, and the discipline and dedication it takes to do something in addition to what you are in school for.

Gray is seeing a lot of interest from potential students due to several investments in their future on the La Salle campus. For instance, La Salle is offering new band, cheer, and dance members a renewable scholarship for participation in the group starting in the Fall of 2025.

“It’s reassuring to be at a program that shares my values on the importance of investing in your students in order to see a program succeed,” Gray said. “The prospective students I speak to and meet each week can’t wait to be on campus next year. I’m thrilled to be one small part of helping build this program up to what I know it can be, and I can’t wait to see who comes with us on the journey.”

Since it is a “special topics” course, students are receiving a general credit towards their graduation requirements, and it is graded like many other pep band “classes” based on participation.

Gray was a teaching assistant for the UW–Madison Band program where he worked with the Varsity Band and Concert Band. One of the biggest things he took away from Madison and brought with him to Philadelphia is the idea of meeting students where they are.

“My time with Badger Band saw me standing in front of mostly non-music majors with the goal of making them really great musicians,” Gray said. “I’m having to do that every time I get in front of my students here, since none of them are at La Salle specifically to study music and I want them to be great musicians. It really goes back to my idea of everyone is teachable and deserves the opportunity to receive a high-quality education and experience.”

Gray also learned how to better interact with people on the operational side “who don’t really know much about how a band operates.”

“Dr. Corey Pompey and Dr. Alexander Gonzalez always emphasized preparation–whether it be for teaching or for meetings, especially with non-music folks. I think that has really helped me face all of the challenges that have been put in front of me.”