Our on-going collaboration with the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Technology and Applied Composition Program (TAC) culminated again this year with a concert of student ClimateMusic compositions. This year’s show took place at San Francisco’s Exploratorium on the evening of May 9th.
TAC Studio Director Taurin Barrera’s Theory of Musical Synthesis students grappled over the semester with the realities of climate change, as introduced by our very own Dr. Alison Marklein. Alison prepared multiple narratives about climate change drawing from the science and backed by data for the students’ exploration and use, and composer Erik Ian Walker talked with the students about his experience in composing Climate as well. Each student then wrote custom software to translate historical climate data and predictive data models into electronic instruments and musical parameters. With this data as the seed, the young composers premiered a range of remarkable compositions exploring the urgent issue of climate change through sound.
We will be posting a few recordings from the show soon! In the meantime, here are photos of just a few of the performances.
Eliza Carrington performs Drowning 
Molly Monahan’s Breaking 
Kamran Adib’s Old Man River with Stephanie Li on cello