Pine View grad solves for 'Gamma' in his latest music composition

As a child growing up on Florida’s Gulf Coast, pianist and composer Roger Zare’s attention was often turned to the Sunshine State’s East Coast, where NASA launches rockets into space from Cape Canaveral.

When a reporter called on April 1 to talk about Zare’s new composition, “Gamma,” he was livestreaming the preparations for that evening’s launch of the Artemis II, the first crewed mission to the moon’s vicinity in 54 years.

“Growing up in Florida, space travel was a big inspiration for me. One of my first compositions, for the Sarasota Youth Orchestras, was called ‘Lift-Off.’ It was written when NASA was returning the Space Shuttle to flight in 2005,” Zare says.

Later in his career, he returned to the topic of space travel by composing, “We Choose to Go to the Moon,” based on President Kennedy’s famous 1961 declaration.

If you’re not from Sarasota, you may not be familiar with the term “Pine View kid.” Zare is one of them. The term refers to students of Pine View, the only standalone public school for gifted kids in the state, according to the Sarasota County Schools website.

After passing an IQ test, Zare attended Pine View from second grade (when it begins) until he graduated from high school in 2003. Zare began playing piano when he was 5 years old, but after sampling Pine View’s elective classes, he settled on the violin and orchestra in junior high.

In high school, a friend introduced him to notation software that allowed him to compose his first orchestra piece that was appropriately called “Die Erste Musik” (German for First Music), when he was just 14.

After he showed his piece to his teacher, Ken Bowermeister, it was performed in the school’s final concert. “I realized I wanted to keep on doing this,” Zare says.

That desire has led to multiple degrees and awards. We’ll just name the degrees: a doctorate of Musical Arts (2012) from the University of Michigan, a master of music (2009) from Maryland’s Peabody Conservatory of Music and a bachelor of music (2007) from the University of Southern California.

Over the years, Zare has found inspiration in science and math for his music and life has presented him with some fortuitous opportunities. While he was working on his doctorate at the University of Michigan, he got the chance to travel to Switzerland and participate in a music program at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known by its acronym CERN.

Zare was chosen to participate in a workshop CERN presented at the Montreux International Jazz Festival called “The Physics of Music and the Music of Physics.” The Donald Sinta Quartet performed Zare’s saxophone quartets LHC and Z (4430).

While at CERN, Zare got to tour the Large Hadron Collider, a massive underground accelerator that smashes ions and protons together at nearly the speed of light. The crash course in subatomic physics really got his creative juices flowing.

Zare’s latest composition, “Gamma,” is based on a mathematical constant discovered by Leonhard Euler in the 18th century and later refined by Lorenzo Mascheroni.

On his website, Zare explains gamma to novices: “We don’t fully understand to this day, but it shows up in many seemingly unrelated places in analytic number theory and calculus and has been dubbed by some as the third most important constant behind pi and e.” Wow! Are you with me on this, folks?

Commissioned by Katie Lombardi for Shahen Mirzoyan, Zare’s “Gamma” will be performed by DragonBoot Quartet, whose four members are students in the Honors Chamber Music Program at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Made up of Cate Carson and Katya Moeller on violin, Sydney Whipple on viola, and Lila Holyoke on cello, DragonBoot won the Grand Prize in the Coltman Chamber Music Competition.

Audiences at the Artist Series Concert at First Presbyterian Church will discover how Zare’s composition turns a seemingly abstract mathematical concept into music. Perhaps some of his fellow travelers in the worlds of music, science and math will truly grok (to use an old sci-fi term) what he has achieved.

Not all of Zare’s compositions are inspired by weighty topics. One of his recent works, which premiered at ensembleNewSRQ’s Jan. 19 concert, is called “Equilibrium.” It’s about Zare’s efforts to find balance in his newfound discipline of running. With Zare’s curiosity, intellect and drive, inspiration lies around every corner.