Wednesday, October 1, 2003
NSF Media Contact: David Hart, 703-292-7737, dhart@nsf.gov

Making beautiful music together: NSF award To help new world syMphony create global music education network

High-Performance Network Connection program's nine awards in 2003 brings total to 244

ch-based New World Symphony (NWS) has received a grant to enhance its connectivity to the Internet2 network and help form a global music education network that can train musicians regardless of geographic location.

Through the greater bandwidth made possible by the NSF grant, NWS will create a network among music educational institutions for the exchange of music experience, education and collaboration. The New World Symphony, which provides post-graduate music education and professional development, and 11 other institutions will soon join or enhance their connectivity to the Internet2 network, thanks to NSF's High-Performance Network Connections (HPNC) program. Internet2 is a consortium of more than 200 universities working with industry and government to support high-performance networking within the U.S. research community.

"Networking empowers people, and its full impact is yet to be seen. With this award, computers talking to computers will change how musicians communicate with musicians," said Thomas Greene, NSF senior program officer. "The HPNC program has had tremendous success as a bridge from research on networks to network-enhanced research in many fields. With the enthusiasm of organizations such as the New World Symphony, exciting things are bound to happen."

As part of Internet2's Abilene network, the New World Symphony (NWS) will extend music education beyond geographic boundaries. Interactive master classes will involve students and educators at several locations; local and remote groups will perform together in artistic events. The increased bandwidth will also open up new opportunities for the NWS's Distance Learning Program, in which world-class artist-teachers at Internet2-connected universities in the United States and other institutions abroad share their expertise with NWS fellows.

"One of the key ingredients for success in using this technology is the partnership and support of other educational institutions," said Tom Snook, Chief Technology Officer of the New World Symphony and principal investigator on the NSF grant. "For the field of advanced music education, this technology will make it possible to collaborate over distances and to develop novel technologies such as sending uncompressed audio and video or creating immersive musical experiences."

Over the years, NSF has made numerous awards in neuroscience, psychology and computer science related to music and how humans experience music, but the award to the New World Symphony is the first award made to a musical ensemble at least since the 1970s, when NSF began maintaining computerized records. It is the first award to an institute of music education through the HPNC program. For the past eight years, the HPNC program has helped extend the reach of the country's network infrastructure to colleges and universities, research centers, and museums. The HPNC program has given scientists and engineers at nearly 250 sites better access to research facilities across the United States.

HPNC awardees use the funds to connect high-performance networks such as the Internet2 consortium's Abilene network and benefit from network speeds up to 2.4 billion bits per second. The two-year awards average $150,000; recipients provide matching funds at least equal to the award amount.

In 2003, the HPNC program's nine awards are supporting 12 additional sites in providing the connections that open up new opportunities for researchers, educators and students. The latest institutions to be connected by the HPNC program are:

* Assumption College and College of the Holy Cross (Massachusetts)
* Central State University, Cedarville University and Wilberforce
University (Ohio)
* Florida Institute of Technology
* The Institute for Genomics Research (Maryland)
* Marquette University (Wisconsin)
* Mount Sinai School of Medicine (New York)
* New World Symphony (Florida)
* Tennessee Technological University
* University of the South (Tennessee)