Leonardo Barilaro, the artist and engineer known as ‘The Space Pianist’, has just premiered his latest single, Listen, the official soundtrack for Polymath Festival 2.0, the world’s leading ideas festival.
The release follows the success of Moon Seeds, Barilaro’s collaboration with Grammy-nominated cellist Tina Guo that was streamed from the International Space Station for the ASTROBEAT mission.
Listen tells a story of cosmic connection, beginning with the raw sound of solar wind captured by NASA’s Parker Solar Probe.
“The track then travels through an atmospheric soundscape, blending grand piano with electronic textures that evoke magnetic fields and granular layers, before arriving at the ethereal sound of the Aurora Borealis, recorded from Earth’s orbit,” Barilaro explains.
“These two authentic space recordings converge, creating a sonic bridge that represents the beautiful interference connecting our sun to our planet.”
What if you merge art and science, Barilaro muses.
“What if you connect the sound of the solar wind and the auroras with a grand piano? What if a piano becomes a spaceship? This is how art makes space… human.”
Listen debuted during ‘The Art of Science’ panel at the Polymath Festival 2.0. Running until September 27, the global ideas festival was created as part of the DaVinci Network, founded by Waqas Ahmed. It celebrates multifaceted human potential − polymathy − and explores interdisciplinary solutions to world problems. Building on its 2021 success, the 2025 festival features over 25 events with more than 40 speakers designed to challenge hyper-specialisation.
The event included the premiere of Listen and its music video, followed by a live performance. To explore the intersection of art and science, Barilaro was joined by thespacepianist.com multidisciplinary artist Samantha Tauber and the Quantum Ballerina, Merritt Moore, with whom he collaborated on the track Black Sun for the ASTROBEAT project.
According to Barilaro, the piece represents “the sonic identity of the festival’s spirit, blending art and science into a unique auditory journey”.
Listen was recorded at Steinway Dubai, with the support of the House of Pianos CEO Shavkat Mamadjonov, and engineered in collaboration with Gazelien Records at NYU Abu Dhabi, mixed and mastered by the freshly NYUAD graduated Daniel Basurto Fojaco, a sound engineer, opera singer and composer.
Barilaro is a pianist, composer and aerospace researcher. As a cultural ambassador of the Space Art Movement, he works to show how “art can help us better understand the Universe and our place in it”. Through music, he encourages people to see space not just as a frontier for science, but as a source for creativity and human connection, guided by his ethos: “In Space, there is space for Everyone”. His ultimate goal is to perform the first-ever piano concert on Mars.
One can listen to the song on Spotify and YouTube.
For more information on Barilaro, visit www.thespacepianist.com, and his Instagram and YouTube accounts. For more information about the Polymath Festival 2.0, log on to www.davinci-network.com/the-festival-2025.
