SOCORRO, N.M. – Students, parents and teachers traveling to Socorro to participate in the New Mexico Science and Engineering Fair the weekend of April 12-13, 2024, are in for an exciting and entertaining performance at New Mexico Tech’s Macey Center. Scrap Arts, an all-percussion ensemble will perform Friday, April 12, at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $20 for adults; $15 for seniors age 65 and older; $8 for youth age 17 and younger; and free for NMT students who show a Tech ID. Tickets are available online at: nmt.edu/pas.  Science Fair attendees are being offered a discounted price by calling or emailing the PAS Office.

Words to describe Scrap Arts’ Invented Instrument Percussion Project include: intricate, playful, powerful, contemporary, experimental, retro-futuristic and genre-defying. The “Children of Metropolis” will bring five athletic musicians to the stage to perform with more than 145 invented instruments -- all handmade by group leader and composer, Gregory Kozak. 

NMT Performing Arts Series Director Dana Chavez said audiences will be inspired and delighted by the Canadian group’s performance.

“We’re thrilled to welcome back to Socorro Scrap Arts Music,” she said. “This will be the group’s third visit here.”

Kozak said his group is looking forward to its return to Socorro, the New Mexico Tech campus, and the opportunity to interact with young inventors and their families.

“We are super excited to be touring in New Mexico again and thrilled to be performing Children of Metropolis in Socorro at New Mexico Tech,” he said. “We still remember the great reception and passionate audience reactions from our previous tour through the state and felt that New Mexico would be a perfect place to debut our new show.”

According to Kozak, Children of Metropolis is a whimsical journey of invented musical instruments, lots of percussion and its own adventurous art-house film. 

“We’re hoping the audiences will be delighted by our beautiful handmade instruments and unique music and surprised by our creative filmmaking.” he said. “We’re bringing a lot of ideas and, I hope, inspiration to our performances.”

Kozak said Children of Metropolis should appeal to budding scientists and inventors because it tells the story of an inventor who uses his big heart and mind to help his neighbors, and, in the process, saves his whole world.

“We’ve created a film peopled by Metrognomes, Gremlins, Sea-Flunkeys and regular folks who have fish-face submarines, embiggener guns and smallifier rays, and communicate with a cat-stronaut in space,” he said. 

Kozak added that the 16mm silent film is accompanied by the group’s quintet, playing on instrument/inventions, such as the xylobe, pippolini, nonettes and bagoleons.

Sponsors of the performance are: The City of Socorro, NMT Student Government Association (SGA) and Graduate Student Association (GSA), Survice Engineering Company, National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO)-Associated Universities Inc., Energetic Materials Research and Training Center (EMRTC), Socorro Family Eye Care, and the New Mexico Economic Development Department Creative Industries grant program.