Connecting our community to meaningful and accessible pathways to climate action is core to our work. Hot off the press are our new climate action toolkits, organized around four themes:
==>Start Conversations
==>Volunteer Your Passion
==>Vote + Push Changes
==>Guide For Youth
Check them out here and drop us a line to let us know what you think at info@climatemusic.org!
Hi everyone, we are taking a few months to focus on some winter housekeeping that will allow us to reach even broader and more diverse audiences. This includes creating new video content, expanding our online reach, and redesigning our website to allow for more engagement with our community. We are also working on two new ClimateMusic compositions, are collaborating with Music Declares Emergency on a songwriters’ workshop series, and much more. Stay tuned for more news before the first blossoms of spring arrive!
The ClimateMusic Project (ClimateMusic.org) is delighted to announce the West Coast premiere of our newest work, Audyssey, by composer Eduardo Del Signore with visual designer Angelo Chiacchio.
Audyssey is a 10-minute piece that presents solutions that could limit future warming, and in doing so it references the IPCC’s Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5° C .
The premiere will be held on October 11th, 7:00-8:30PM (PT) in conjunction with an event sponsored by KQED Live in San Francisco and The New York Times, “Art and Tech in a Warming World”. Dr. Whendee Silver, a ClimateMusic science advisor, will participate in the event as well.
Experience this music and conversation in person or by live-stream by registering here: https://lnkd.in/ghNaN2XR
The artwork above is by Alisa Singer, “Scenarios for Reducing Emissions”. Check-out her inspiring work at Environmental Graphiti!
We are delighted to announce that The ClimateMusic Project will premiere its newest portfolio composition, Audyssey, during Climate Week in New York City. The premiere will take place at a private event hosted by the World Economic Forum’s Center for Nature and Climate.
Audyssey is a musical exploration of pathways to a “softer landing” in the climate emergency, and is by composer Eduardo Del Signore with visual designer Angelo Chiacchio in collaboration with The ClimateMusic Project.
A publicly accessible interview with the composer and lead scientist on the project, Dr. Garrett Boudinot, will take place on Tuesday, September 20th at 3:30 Eastern. For more information, please visit this site.
After a summer of new content development we are now gearing up for our fall performance season! First up will be the East Coast premiere of our newest work, Audyssey, by composer Eduardo Del Signore with visual designer Angelo Chiacchio. The premiere will be held at a World Economic Forum event in New York City on September 20th. The West Coast premiere of Audyssey will follow on October 11th at a KQED/New York Times event in San Francisco. Check out our events page for more information on these and other fall performances as they are confirmed. (Art on this post by Alisa Singer, Environmental Graphiti)
We are excited to report that our first songwriters’ workshop was a success! On June 6th, we partnered with Music Declares Emergency on a 1/2 day test session that paired a small group of distinguished songwriters with outstanding climate scientists. The workshop objective was to provide the artists with insight and information so that they can integrate accurate messaging about the climate crisis and climate action into their music. The session also included time for riffing off of the insights to spark new music in breakout rooms, and a segment on engaging audiences on climate action. The participants will regroup in a month to share the completed songs, which will be in both folk/country and latin rock genres. We’ll share them once they are fully polished this summer, so stay tuned for more! Thanks to Taurin Barrera and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Technology and Applied Composition Program for hosting us and for participating.
Those of you who saw our live international concert last November will remember the emotionally gripping performance of Everything Matters, an urgent call to climate action, by acclaimed artists Khafre Jay and Martin Luther McCoy. We commissioned Khafre to create this powerfully uplifting song for ClimateMusic concerts, but there’s no need to wait for our next concert, because it’s now accessible as a video! Enjoy it here and share widely. Music never lies—feel it!
You can learn more about Khafre’s work through his organization, Hip Hop For Change.
We are honored to have our work profiled in the just-released sustainability issue of Mission Magazine, the first philanthropic fashion media brand, which aims to engage socially conscious people and companies through the lens of fashion to help those in need. Access it here!
We are excited to be heading (virtually) to Norway on March 28th to participate in “The Unusual Suspects – Communication for Climate Change by New Societal Actors”, an online workshop with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Composer Richard Festinger will introduce our work, and Dr. Garrett Boudinot will be on hand to engage the audience in Q&A. Participation is free and open to the public online. To register, please click here (note that time is Central European Time)
Although our focus is on music, we are continually moved by the work of other artists who direct their creative skills towards communicating insights about climate change. We regularly integrate other arts into our performances, and have an in-house artist, painter Richard Louis Perri, who since 2015 has been creating fine art prints for our concerts.
Some of these spotlights are not up to the current date, however each one conveys important insights about climate science and the urgency of acting on the climate crisis. Go to the Climate Artist Spotlight page here.
Beyond our work, there are so many more creative, ground-breaking ways in which individuals around the world find ways to bridge art, climate science, and change. Our podcast series Climate Vibes explores the human creativity evident at these intersections through conversations with climate artist change-makers and problem-solvers. Keep up with our latest episodes on Spotify, ListenNotes, and RSS!
The Climate Vibes Podcast is not current in the works, but if you would like to learn more about Climate Vibes and listen to some creative individuals click on our archives page here.
We were honored to have been invited to contribute to the Opening Day of WEP2022 at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia on January 9th. Sharing the stage with world-renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, ClimateMusic shared videos of two of its compositions, Climate, and What If We...? and then participated virtually in a Q&A featuring composers Erik Ian Walker (Climate) and Wendy Loomis (What If We…?), as well as ClimateMusic founder Stephan Crawford, who also provided a welcome statement on behalf of the project. To view the Opening Day event, please click here.
Weren’t able to make it to our concert Live! From Vienna and San Francisco: A Musical Call for Climate Action back in November? Don’t fret—you can now access the concert recording, free of charge, by registering via this form! The link to the video will be accessible to registrants directly after submitting the form, along with the digital program, climate action pledge form, and post-concert feedback survey.
The bi-continental program features climate-inspired music of various genres, with highlights including a performance of Richard Festinger‘s composition, Icarus in Flight, performances by globally renowned violinist Yury Revich, and a call to action by Khafre Jay, community organizer and founder of Hip Hop for Change.
We are honored to contribute through music to this vital conversation! This event is open to the public–click here to register.
We are delighted to announce that Amy Quirk, a distinguished attorney and environmental advocate, has joined our Leadership Council. A former complex business litigator, Amy coordinated a team of Bay Area environmental organizations to address potential impacts of proposed runways into San Francisco Bay and to examine sustainable alternatives. She was an awardee of San Francisco Tomorrow’s 2004 “Unsung Hero” for that work. She currently serves with several non-profits: as a legislative advocate with California Interfaith Power & Light; an environmental advisor with The Bishop’s Ranch of the Diocese of California; and with the Equity Review Team of CalSEED (California Sustainable Energy Entrepreneur Development Initiative).
Amy joins an esteemed group of leaders in business, government, academia, non-profits, and the arts on our Leadership Council, which advises our team on mission implementation. In addition to Amy, the Council currently includes Dr. Chris Luebkeman, ETH (Zürich); Joel Makower, Greenbiz; Michael Meehan, UKSIF; Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky; Dr. Bruce Pickering, UC Berkeley; Randy Rosenberg, Art Works for Change; Jason Simon, Enphase Energy
Join us with the University of Toronto’s Massey College on April 27th at 4PM as we take an extraordinary musical journey through time to explore three human drivers of climate change. We will be featuring the three movements of Icarus in Flight by composer Richard Festinger, punctuated by conversation around the music and climate science with scientist and violinist Gavia Lertzman-Lepofsky. Q&A to follow. Moderated by Senior Fellow Dr. Dianne Saxe. This is an online event open to all.
We are excited to announce two ways that you can celebrate Earth Day with us this week:
On Earth Day itself (April 22nd) starting at 10AM Pacific we are participating in an event hosted by The Brooklyn Rail. This online event, The Sound of Science, will be a mind meld of scientists and artists around the topic of climate. We’ll be featuring a short version of our very first composition, Climate , and will have composer Erik Ian Walker on hand with Dr. Andy Jones and Laurie Goldman to offer their insights about music, science, science + music, and climate action. The event will include additional contributions by an impressive line-up of guests, including Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky, journalist and accomplished musician Andrew Revkin, scientist Dr. Jacqueline Austermann, artist Torkwase Dyson, and more!
For more information and to register, please click here.
Throughout the week, we’ll be running our springtime edition of Play for the Planet! This light-hearted campaign offers musicians of all stripes a platform to provide a musical answer to the question: What Do You Want The Future To Sound Like? Participants also call out their favorite climate action/environmental organizations to help spread the good news that there is a lot of good work being done out there! When we ran the campaign last fall, we received video submissions from across the globe!
If you’d like to view the videos or submit one yourself (it’s not too late and it’s easy!), please click here for more information. We’ll be posting videos throughout the week, so check back frequently! 🙂
We are delighted to announce that we just launched this year’s annual collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Technology and Applied Composition Program (TAC). Now in it’s fourth year, this collaboration provides a crash course on climate science for a classroom of young composers. The students then work with one of our scientists throughout the semester to explore their ideas for communicating the science through music.
This year’s collaboration launched on March 23rd, with Dr. Alison Marklein providing a turbocharged presentation on climate science to the class of more than a dozen students via Zoom.
Alison, who is also an accomplished musician, will work with TAC’s Executive Director, Professor Taurin Barrera, to help the students through the process of internalizing the science and expressing their insights musically. In past years, the class has culminated in a public concert of student works, including at San Francisco’s famous Exploratorium in 2019. This year, we hope to be able to integrate one or two of the new pieces into a major international concert we are planning for November (more soon!).
