Just to the side of the stage, level with the musicians, sat a pair of neuroscientists, Ying Choon Wu and Alex Khalil, who had been monitoring the brain waves of two audience volunteers sitting nearby, with their heads encased in research-grade headsets from a company called Cognionics. Wu, a scientist at the University of California, San Diego, investigates the effects of works of art on the brain; in another study, she's observing the brain waves of people viewing paintings at the San Diego Museum of Art. Khalil, a former U.C. San Diego researcher who now teaches ethnomusicology at University College Cork in Ireland, focuses on how music gets people to synchronize their behavior. Both aim to integrate art and science. Which makes them a good match for Allado-McDowell, who first pitched "Song of the Ambassadors" in January 2021 as a participant in the Collider, a Lincoln Center fellowship program supported by the Mellon Foundation.