Redefining Our Relationship To The Natural World The climate crisis can be overwhelming. It’s easy to feel paralyzed. In our first EcoEcho concert of the 25/26 season, we explore not only technically feasible climate solutions, but also the opportunity to redefine our relationship to the natural world and the underlying assumptions that have brought us to the brink of climate and ecological catastrophe.
The concert will feature live performances of two ClimateMusic compositions, Audyssey and Voice of the Animals, followed by an in-depth conversation including a climate scientist and audience engagement. There will also be a special live youth choir performance of The Be Cool Song byOakland Interfaith Youth Choir at the end of the event.
We are very excited that one of our original compositions, “What if we?” by the amazing @copusmusic opened the International Ocean Film Festival on FRIDAY, APRIL 11, at the Cowell Theatre SF as a live performance. The piece was composed by Wendy Loomis with poetics by Royal Kent in collaboration with the ClimateMusic Project. Visit here for more on What if We…? and visit here for more on the International Film Festival.
Composed by Theodore Wiprud with soloist Elissa Cassini and visuals by Camilla Tassi, Violin Concerto No. 2: on the brink, explores the vicious cycles that have brought us to the brink and the virtuous cycles that could yet pull us back.
You can watch the premiere of performed at The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, on the SDPB Specials. The performance was recorded live in the Mary W. Sommervold Hall at the Washington Pavilion on January 25, 2025.
The work begins at about 9 minutes in.
Learn more about the premiere from the composer here.
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.
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)
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.
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 ofIcarus in Flightby 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 were delighted to have been invited on December 7th to engage online with members of the venerable Rainier Club in Seattle. The evening event included the screening of a short video version of Climate, a composition by composer Erik Ian Walker in collaboration with The ClimateMusic Project. Erik joined from San Francisco to answer questions about the work, and Dr. Whendee Silver logged-on from Berkeley to engage the audience in a conversation about solutions to the climate crisis.
During the pandemic we have been developing online programming, and invite schools, civic groups, faith communities, and others to contact us about scheduling an event!
Last year a student at the Conservatory of Music in Amsterdam, Beatrice Miniaci, contacted us about performing one of our portfolio compositions, Icarus in Flight by composer Richard Festinger. Of course, we were delighted by this proposal, since our goal is to engage musicians all over the world to perform ClimateMusic.
Beatrice pulled together a quartet of young musicians, who put in a lot of work learning and rehearsing the piece, and on top of it all, Beatrice managed all of the details for two concerts, which were originally scheduled for last March in Amsterdam. But then came COVID, and they had to be cancelled.
Fast forward to earlier this fall, and Beatrice got back in touch to say that the concert was authorized to go ahead in a very small venue, a former cinema called De Roode Bioscoop, located on a canal in Amsterdam. The performance took place on October 29th before a very small local audience, but it was streamed to over 600 people in six countries. An encore concert was authorized at the main library in Amsterdam on November 1st.
We were heartened by the determination of these young artists to use their talents to engage on the climate crisis. As they wrote in the program:
With recording-breaking wildfires, droughts and floods, climate change is knocking at our door. Yet for many of us, it is easier to ignore the changing climate than engage emotionally. For one, it is too abstract, for the other, too overwhelming. This concert invites us to explore our own emotional reactions to the changing climate. What is happening to the planet, and how do we feel about it? As our emotional paralysis melts, we can be inspired to meaningful action rather than inaction.
This is exactly what we are aiming for in our work, and we thank Beatrice and her fellow musicians for their hard work and dedication to communicating the urgency of the climate crisis. We plan to take what we learned from this first experience with streaming a remote concert, and apply it to future performances around the world that can both inspire and facilitate action.
The musicians were: Beatrice Miniaci, flute; Emil Peltola, violin; Seamus Hickey, viola; Dominika Kaczmarczyk, cello; Martin Vera Guerra, oboe; Giuseppe Sapienza, clarinet; Alvaro Artime Jimenez, trumpet; Pieter Bogaert, piano. The concerts also included a composition by British composer Kate Honey, Earth’s Gift, and Dutch visual artist Emma van der Steen. This latter piece was very beautiful, but was not associated with The ClimateMusic Project.
We are delighted to announce that we will be performing at The National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, April 22nd at 7PM! The award-winning Telegraph Quartet will perform Icarus in Flight, by the distinguished composer Richard Festinger in collaboration with The ClimateMusic Project. This chamber music work explores human drivers of climate change, including two possible future scenarios, from 1880-2080. The concert, part of the Academy’s Eternal Experience series, will be followed by a panel discussion. This event is free and open to the public. For ticketing information and other details, please click here.
Our spring concert line-up is looking to be robust, with the first shows just announced!
On March 28th and April 8th we will have the honor and pleasure of collaborating with talented young musicians from the Music Conservatory in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) on two live performances in Amsterdam of Icarus in Flight, by composer Richard Festinger in collaboration with The ClimateMusic Project. These concerts are made possible through the support of the City of Amsterdam’s Fund for Art (AFK) and will be our first live performances of our work in Europe. We wish to thank our collaborators across the Atlantic for their hard work in producing these performances. Watch our events page for further details!
On April 21st, we will be in Chicago to perform Climate at a major industry conference. This will be our first live concert in the Midwest, and it will also likely be our largest audience ever, with more than 1,000 people expected in the audience! Please visit our events page for updates.
We expect to announce additional exciting engagements very soon, so stay tuned!
We invite artists from around the world to join us and respond to the question: “What do you want the future to sound like?”
The ClimateMusic Project is delighted to feature responses from the creative community in our virtual series, “Play for the Planet”, which is a diversion from our core science-guided music during this time of Covid. We also invite artists to call out their favorite environmental nonprofits or highlight our own amazing partners in order to motivate action and engagement. At a time when the future of our climate seems dire, the need for hope and action has never been more important.
Click here to learn about the Play for the Planet Fall 2020 Campaign.
Click here to learn about the Play for the Planet Fall 2021 Campaign.
Click here to learn about the Play for the Planet Fall 2018 Campaign.
If you will be in Los Angeles on December 20 or 21, please join us at two Holiday Earth Concerts by our friends at A Call 2 Peace Foundation.
The concerts benefit The ClimateMusic Project, as well as our partners Interfaith Power & Light and A Call 2 Peace. The All-Star line-up for these multi-genre concerts includes:
We are thrilled to announce that we will be premiering our newest work, What If We…? at two high-profile events in Washington D.C. on October 29th and 30th.
First up on October 29th will be a performance at the World Bank’s headquarters in conjunction with the opening of the exhibitionThe Art of Resilience. Then on October 30th, we’ll appear at Forest Trends’ 20th Anniversary dinner event.
What If We…?, by the award-winning composer Wendy Loomis with spoken word artist Royal Kent in collaboration with The ClimateMusic Project, is a sonic dive into climate change-induced sea level rise, contrasting two possible futures, and asking what the world could be like if we can muster the collective will now to act on the climate crisis. The work will be performed by the jazz and spoken word ensemble COPUS. The Bay Area-based band has received awards and nominations for its provocative poetic jazz; they have performed throughout the U.S. at places including The Bitter End in New York, SFJazz in San Francisco, and the Cutting Edge Festival in New Orleans. In addition to Wendy Loomis and Royal Kent, the quartet includes bassist Patrick Mahon and drummer Levon Washington.
Accompanying visuals are by the distinguished artist Kim Anno.
