Meet Ira and Tom – a newly-wed couple from Heidelberg and band members of Lazy Fur – a music duo that have been performing live for participants of numerous virtual EMBL conferences and symposia.

“It feels good that we can bring joy and help provide even a better conference experience with a little bit of live music.”

Who is Lazy Fur?

Tom is a Research Staff Scientist in Matthias Hentze’s and Wolfgang Huber’s labs at EMBL Heidelberg and Ira is an executive assistant in a real estate company.

Both of them grew up with music. Ira started singing when she was little and now also plays the piano and bass guitar.

“I used to play the keyboard but discovered my calling as a guitarist in my PostDoc time at EMBL.” Tom shares.

They bonded over their passion for music and started playing acoustic covers of pop and rock songs and singer/songwriter style music. Ira is inspired by Walk Off The Earth, a Canadian group of friends who do spectacular covers of pop songs. And Tom is generally fascinated by buskers in Dublin he met during his PhD.

Virtual concert setup

Virtual conferences are great for many things, but it is very hard to organise entertainment. Lazy Fur found a way to give a live music performance and interact with participants.

Tom had to put in quite some effort to get it right:

“The technical side was quite challenging at first, but now we are very happy that we can provide high-quality streams. We can interact with the viewers who appreciate the live aspect of our performance. “

Conference entertainment in times of Covid-19: ✔. Thanks to Lazy Fur for a great virtual concert. 👌#EMBLOmics #virtualconference pic.twitter.com/lEuTaahuqS

— EMBL Events (@EMBLEvents) November 18, 2020

What is it like to perform for a virtual audience?

Onsite, you can easily tell which songs the audience likes and if they like the show. In front of a virtual audience, it is more difficult, because you can not see and hear them. Tom and Ira did find a way to interact with the audience.

“The audience can communicate with us either via the YouTube or conference platform chat displayed on the TV in front of us.” Tom says. 

Ira: “We are extremely happy about all the positive responses we got in the chat or comments people sent us after the show.”

Tom: “We have had heart-warming messages from participants about how they enjoyed it. They wrote that this was a very unique and uplifting experience that reminded them of past conferences at the EMBL Heidelberg site.”

And after Covid-19?

Tom: “Performing live is just an amazing experience. EMBL has a great appreciation for live music at their events and it is wonderful to connect with people on that level. So yes, definitely looking forward to that as well!”

Lazy Fur will be performing at the virtual EMBO Workshop: Predicting Evolution, 14 – 16 June 

Check out the website of Lazy Fur
Check the Lazy Fur YouTube channel