What might it mean for musicians and scientists to work together to share the latest scientific work, and to engage on major issues affecting society? Western Music viola professor Sharon Wei and Western Engineering professor Greg Kopp have been exploring exactly this question through a multi-year collaboration.

In March 2026, Wei and Kopp traveled to Queen’s University in an event designed to showcase the potential of arts-science collaborations, with their project, “Sounding Tornadoes,” serving as the exemplar. The 3-day residency, titled “Currents of Change: Musical Expressions, Scientific Explorations, and Northern Tornadoes Project,” showcased the collaborative work that Wei and Kopp have facilitated, alongside the New Orford String Quartet (of which she is a member), Western Music student performers, and various student and professional composers.

“Currents of Change” was a student workshop organized by the Department of Chemical Engineering at Queen’s to examine how scientists and artists can work together bring about social change. Wei has been collaborating with Western Engineering professor Greg Kopp since 2023 to conceptualize ways of bringing research around climate change to a broader audience. Their project “Sounding Tornadoes” was presented as a model of effective science-arts collaboration.

During the residency, alongside performances of musical works commissioned through the Tornadoes project, Wei, Kopp, the New Orford Quartet, and composer Cecilia Livingston talked about their work together to “sonify the data” of the NTP. Both artists and engineers, Kopp said, share an interest in building things for humanity. Wei described early work with seismologist Lucy Jones, who was interested in how music could serve public messaging around climate change. Inspired by these conversations, Wei organized Kaleidoscope of Creativity in the Faculty of Music in March 2024, with funding through Kopp’s project, and commissioned new works from Music graduate students on climate change for performance there, alongside showcases of other arts-science projects that deal with climate issues.

Wei and Kopp’s collaboration has allowed for the commissioning of three string quartets for the New Orford String Quartet from professional Canadian composers, which have been performed across Ontario and in Alberta, British Columbia, and California by this award-winning North American ensemble. These works are by Carmen Braden, a Canadian composer from the sub-Arctic; JUNO winner Vincent Ho; and Canadian Opera Company composer-in-residence Cecilia Livingston. At the Queens residency, Livingston described how she studied the findings of the NTP to create After the Wind, which evokes the impact of tornadoes in Canada’s remote forest.

Kopp and Wei have also commissioned works from Western graduate student Emily Hiemstra. Attendees at the Queens event heard Hiemstra’s viola quartets La Malbaie and Didsbury, performed by Hiemstra alongside Western students Cian Diamond and Tasman Tantasawat and Western Music staff member and alum Chantal Lemire. Didsbury evokes the destruction wrought by a specific NTP-documented tornado in Didsbury, Alberta on Canada Day 2023. Hiemstra told the audience that the piece evoked “the power, the awe, and the smallness that you feel” in the face of a tornado like this. Hiemstra’s tornado works were also performed by Hiemstra, Wei, and Western students Cian Diamond and Lincoln St John at the International Viola Conference in Paris, France in January, 2026, alongside other climate-related works.

At the Queens event, Livingston also discussed the ways she used the quartet to showcase humans working effectively together, with the music serving to draw the listener into climate-related conversations and to leave them with something to think about. This kind of arts-based science communication, as the team described, is an effective tool to engage the public in important issues like climate change.

As a soloist, Wei has recently given performances of an NTP-connected viola concerto, When The Sky Was Amber by Saman Shahi. This work, which evokes an arriving storm, was co-commissioned for her to perform by Ensemble Obiora, Stratford Symphony, PEI Symphony, and Symphony Nova Scotia. Wei played the work with Ensemble Obiora in January 2026 and with the Stratford Symphony in May. She will perform it with the remaining orchestras during the 2026-27 season.