Music can tap hidden wellsprings in the mind and help listeners solve problems that once seemed insurmountable. That’s the idea behind a unique collaboration called Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project. It mixes original music by composer Laura Kaminsky with the science of climate change. The Fry String Quartet brings the performance to Northern Arizona University tonight. In KNAU’s latest installment of Eats and Beats, stories about food and music, Melissa Sevigny spoke with a scientist and a violinist about how the project was born.
I’m Robert Davies, I’m a professor of professional practice at the Utah State University Department of Physics.
My name is Robert Waters, and I’m first violinist of the Fry Street Quartet.
Our collaboration got started about 11 years ago, when I was doing presentations to the public in climate change—the science of climate change. It felt like the information was getting through on an intellectual level, but the audiences weren't really connecting to what it means… And I’m here at University State University and we have this amazing professional string quartet here.
All of us in the Fry Street Quartet had been concerned citizens about climate and sustainability for a long time. But as classical musicians and string quartet players, there are not so many ways to lend our art and our voices to that discussion in meaningful way, outside of just signing this petition and calling your senator and such. So the idea of collaborating on something that was going to be really meaningful and potentially move some hearts and minds and be a real call to action for people—using our art in support of that cause—was hugely inspiring.
The performance—we sometimes call ‘performance science project.’ It’s a sequence of five vignettes. In each vignette I give a 5-6 minute poetic-ish science lecture, backed up by some vivid imagery by some amazing visual artists…. and then after my little lecture we unleash this music.
Music, whether it’s about sustainability or climate change or anything that a composer who is writing or a performer who’s performing has in mind, it’s an art that has the capability of communicating something that it’s not possible really to communicate in words. That’s why pretty much all of humanity is addicted to music on one level or another, regardless of what style it is… To tap into that very deep part of humanity’s emotional identity, in service of this extremely important message, I think is one of the reasons it’s been as powerful as it is.
Over the years in the rewriting, where we’ve come to, is to not tell people what to do, but to rather help them understand the mindset we need to move forward with in order to be effective. And make it clear that whoever you are, whatever your talents and whatever your means, you have something to bring to the table to this. There is work for you to do here…. What's that mindset that's going to allow you to get up and go forward and do this work, and even do it with joy.
The Fry Street Quartet will perform ‘Rising Tide’ tonight at 7:30pm at the Kitt Recital Hall at Northern Arizona University. Admission is free, with support from the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society.
