YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 4, ARMENPRESS. A jazz concert and a lecture by Nobel Prize-winning Norwegian neuroscience and psychology professor Edvard Moser kicked off the highly anticipated STARMUS VI: 50 Years on Mars festival in Yerevan, Armenia.

The 6th edition of the global festival of science communication and art featured the first ever jazz concert at STARMUS. 

Moser, who shared the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with long-term collaborator and then-wife May-Britt Moser, and previous mentor John O'Keefe for their work identifying the brain's positioning system, spoke about the specificities of the brain in perceiving music at the Music and Brain lecture. Moser said that music is a social phenomenon and performing music can contribute to the brain’s interpersonal coordination mechanisms.

After the lecture, American keyboardist Derek Sherinian, English drummer Simon Phillips and American bassist Ric Fierabracci took the stage for the concert program. Jazz pianist and composer Tigran Hamasian performed pieces from his 2020 The Call Within album together with bassist Marc Karapetian and drummer Arthur Hnatek.