Orcas impresario Roger Sherman will treat islanders to an Orcas Currents lecture on “Harmony of the Spheres: the Music of the Cosmos” on Thursday, Sept. 24.

Encompassing music, mathematics, nature, science and history, his multifaceted presentation will begin at 5:30 pm in the Orcas Island Community Church on Madrona Street in Eastsound.

Sherman is known to many of us as the Artistic Director of the Orcas Choral Society, which under his leadership has taken on such challenging choral works as Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Handel’s Messiah, and Mozart’s Requiem. He is also Associate Organist at Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and host of the weekly Organ Loft radio program broadcast on KING-FM.

In his Orcas Currents lecture, Roger will explore relationships between numbers and such diverse human activities as music, architecture, astronomy cosmology and religion. To ancient Greeks, the word “cosmos” meant the inherent orderliness of the natural world, which found expression in the mathematical discoveries of philosophers such as Pythagoras about geometry, proportion and musical harmony.

This tradition in western philosophy has been extended by scientists such as Johannes Kepler, who in 1619 wrote Harmonices Mundi (Harmonies of the Worlds). It finds expression today in string theories of elementary particles and the “Theories of Everything” based on them.

Sherman’s lecture is cosponsored by Coates Vineyards and the Orcas Island Public Library. Please join Orcas Currents supporters and friends for what promises to be a stimulating, wide-ranging talk about what it means to be human. As always admission is free but donations are welcome.