Music & Climate Justice

Connecting music to the issues of today is a core part of Nodality Music’s mission, and what more pressing issue is there than the climate crisis? For a few years now, Zach and Nick have been exploring how music and art can inspire us to look at our natural world differently, how the stories music tells can help inform and educate us when data falls short, and how it can move us to action. We have been especially interested in the idea of climate justice – the idea that the effects of climate change impact people and groups unequally and that climate change is inherently interconnected with social and racial injustice.

Nodality Music is creating a variety of platforms to address climate justice using art and music. This past season, in fact, Zach worked extensively with high school students at Philadelphia’s Carver High School of Science and Engineering, teaching students about climate justice and the many ways in which human society harms our natural world—and how that damage inevitably comes back to us. He also guided these students – all from a wide variety of classes spanning music, art, dance, and environmental science – in projects that used art, science, and storytelling to create interactive performances themed around climate justice. These included a performance at the Kimmel Center, a series of graphic compositions, and Spring performance at Carver.

Climate justice in the concert hall and beyond

We will continue this educational work in Philadelphia and other areas going forward, but we also have started incorporating environmental awareness in our programming and commissioning. Using our signature narrative format, we curate programs that both share key ideas about what climate justice is and that ask listeners to contemplate more deeply their own connection with and impact on the enivornment.

In fact, we have already embarked on a commissioning initiative that will create more works themed around climate justice. The first of these was Ira Mowitz’s Carver Climate Upcycle, which was premiered this year by students from the Curtis Institute and Carver. Nick is currently writing a piece for Zach to premiere next season alongside Gary Hoffman, with performances scheduled at the Curtis Institute and the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium, among other venues.