The Apollo Soundtrack multimedia performance in Matera – the European 2019 Capital of Culture – the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
The event, stemming from a project of the Fondazione Matera Basilicata 2019 foundation and performed for the first time outside the United Kingdom, will be held at the Cava del Sole quarry and will involve a multimedia performance with Icebreaker, the music of Brain Eno, Roger Eno and Daniel Lanois, alongside exclusive footage from space, with Roger Eno, B.J. Cole and Icelandic cellist, Gyda Valtysdottir.
The musical event is also a tribute to the territory’s scientific vocation. The performance evokes Space, one of the themes of the Italy Pavilion at Expo 2020 Dubai and the high specialization of the territory of Matera. The district houses one of the world’s most advanced space centres, operational since 1994 and dedicated to the observation of the Earth, with the adjacent Centre for Space Geodesy of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), set up in 1983.
From Matera, a laser beam from the MLRO (Matera Laser Ranging Observatory) of ASI periodically reaches a few retro-reflectors on the moon’s surface, positioned there over the course of the Apollo missions and during the subsequent Lunokhod robotic missions. The Earth-Moon distances, calculated from the laser’s outbound and inbound journey times, allow for completing fundamental studies in physics and general relativity besides enhancing knowledge of our natural satellite’s inner structure.
The Fondazione Matera Basilicata 2019 foundation is the institutional partner of Italy’s participation project at Expo 2020 Dubai.