By Susan Peterson

Gazette Staff

A major music hall is where you might reasonably expect to hear a performance of Mendelssohn's Octet in E flat Major, Op. 20, and a Brahms sonata played with exquisite precision.

Instead, they recently resounded in a science classroom as students in the Summer School's organic and general chemistry classes gathered to showcase their talents beyond the lab. About 150 students, professors, and friends crowded a Science Center lecture hall for the event.

The concert was orchestrated by two music-loving chemistry professors and their students as a way to relieve a little stress before final exams.

"We're not strictly about science," said Addison Ault, a chemistry professor from Cornell College in Iowa who has taught the organic chemistry class for 11 summers and who is teaching at Harvard this fall. Eleven years ago, he hired a cellist performing in the subway to play for his class before the final exam.

Ault and James Davis, senior lecturer in chemistry and molecular and cellular biology (FAS) who teaches the general chemistry course, share office space and discovered their mutual interest in music. They began playing CDs during breaks between classes, and soon students began bringing in music themselves. The professors learned they had some musicians in their midst.

A full-scale concert and variety show has since become a part of their end-of-term schedule.

"It's a tradition now for our classes," explained Ault, who began studying the cello 14 years ago.

The two-hour concert on Aug. 9 featured works by Mendelssohn and Massenet, a piano and violin duet from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and an a cappella Lean on Me, sung by 16-year-old Danny Fahim, a high school junior from Troy, Mich.

The students also glimpsed another side of their teaching fellow, Logan McCarty '96. In a bring-the-house-down Dialog from the Faerie Queen by Purcell, McCarty sang the role of Mopsa, the fair maiden who shuns the lecherous Corridon, played by Davis.

"This had a very high degree of spontanaeity," laughed Davis, who threw himself into the act with the confidence of a seasoned performer.

"We rehearsed it -- maybe twice," said McCarty, a Ph.D. candidate in chemistry. When he's not in the lab, McCarty is a tenor soloist with the Harvard Glee Club and studied solo singing with the New England Conservatory Bach Cantata Institute this summer.

"Logan is an amazing chemist and musician," said Davis, who honed his own vocal skills in graduate school while singing in the M.I.T. Choral Society.

Other performers were students who cut into precious study time to practice.

"It was really intimidating, but a good experience," said Jenny Mongkolcheep, who works 20 hours a week on the Harvard Infant Study Program (a developmental psychology lab run by Jerome Kagan, the Daniel and Amy Starch Professor of Psychology), and takes classes, and still found time to play her own variation on George Winston's Pachelbel Canon.

This concert not only entertained its audience, but fed it, too. The grand finale included making "instant ice cream" in a mock kitchen in front of the hall. A group of students dumped cream, sugar, and vanilla into mixing bowls and then poured in liquid nitrogen to freeze the mixture, stirring it together in mad scientist fashion. The audience then stormed the stage to sample the flavorful concoction.

The morning's events concluded with a half-hour show of colorful and spectacular chemistry "explosions" produced by Daniel Rosenberg, who works in the Science Center and assists professors with experiments.

As part of their course enrichment philosophy, Ault and Davis also schedule speakers for their classes during the term. Two weeks before the final concert, Dr. Mark Murcko, a chemist from a local biotech firm, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, spoke about molecular modeling and designing drugs.

"We always have someone who is involved with chemistry speak to the students," Ault explained. "I bear in mind that almost all of my students have the ambition of going to medical school, and hearing someone else brings more breadth and interest to studying and life."