Slideshow image

(PDF) Press Release - Christ Church Cathedral launches Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice

Christ Church Cathedral and the Emily Carr String Quartet are thrilled to announce Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice, their third concert partnership since 2020. This six-concert series will feature one of Canada’s top quartets and the cathedral’s Wolff organ played by a lineup of international artists. The February through June 2022 concerts will draw attention to the need for personal action to reverse the climate crisis and will include talks from local advocates, experts, and workers in matters of climate justice. Each concert will focus on a different facet of our relationship with the natural world, aiming to educate, entertain, and inspire change.

The first three concerts, entitled “Air,” “Water,” and “Land,” will be performed by the Emily Carr String Quartet and include thematically linked music by John Luther Adams, R. Murray Schafer, Marjan Mozetich alongside classics by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Johannes Brahms. The inaugural Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice concert, ‘Air’, will launch on February 11 at 5.00 pm with special guest speaker, BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau.

The second half of the series will foreground Christ Church Cathedral’s magnificent pipe organ in three concerts featuring the cathedral’s Assistant Director of Music, Mark McDonald, playing Gustav Holst’s “The Planets,” Simon Johnson (Westminster Cathedral, UK) playing Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolff,” and a collaboration between organist Jenny Vincent and CBC science journalist Bob McDonald entitled “Earth, Wind, Fire, and Life.” Built in 2005 by Helmuth Wolff, and consisting of 4 keyboards, a pedalboard and 4,000 individual pipes, the Cathedra’s Wolff organ is the west coast’s finest.

Our Dean, The Very Reverend M. Ansley Tucker, is pleased that the cathedral can get involved in projects that help draw attention to the imperative to safeguard, sustain and renew the life of the earth. “Human beings are finally beginning to grasp that we are not the possessors of the earth and its creatures,” she says, “but rather one part of a great ecosystem upon which we rely, and which relies upon us.”  

This series is made possible in part thanks to the support of the Gail O’Riordan Climate and Arts Legacy Fund at the Victoria Foundation
www.climateandthearts.org

  • What: Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice
  • Where: Christ Church Cathedral, Corner of Quadra & Rockland
  • When: February 11, March 11, April 22, May 27, June 1, June 3, 2022
  • Tickets: $25-30 
  • To learn more visit: www.christchurchcathedral.bc.ca/earthsongs  

Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice – Full Program:

PART ONE  

Air - Friday, February 11 at 5.00 p.m
*Special Guest: Sonia Furstenau
Performers: The Emily Carr String Quartet
John Luther Adams, “The Wind in High Places”
Maurice Ravel, String Quartet in F Major  

Water - Friday, March 11 at 5.00 p.m
*marking World Water Day on Tuesday, March 22
Performers: The Emily Carr String Quartet
R. Murray Shafer, String Quartet 2 “Waves”
Claude Debussy, String Quartet in G minor Op.10  

Land - Friday, April 22 at 5.00 p.m
*marking Earth Day
Performers: The Emily Carr String Quartet
Marjan Mozetich, Lament in the Trampled Garden (BISQ Commission 2012)
Brahms String Quartet no. 2 in A minor  

PART TWO  

Earth, Wind, Fire, and Life - Friday, May 27 at 7.00 p.m
Performers: Jenny Vincent and Bob McDonald International recitalist Jenny Vincent and host of CBC’s Quirks and Quarks Bob McDonald have educated and entertained Vancouver Island residents over the past several years by bringing coupling visuals, narration and music to shed light on the invisible things all around us and the farthest reaches of the universe.  

Peter and the “Wolff” - Wednesday, June 1 at 7.00 p.m
Performer: Simon Johnson (Westminster Cathedral, UK) Having recently taken up the post of Master of the Music at Westminster Cathedral in London, Simon Johnson directs one of the greatest choirs on the planet. In his first west coast appearance, he plays his own transcription of Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf”

The Planets - Friday, June 3 at 7.00 p.m.
Performer: Mark McDonald, The Cathedral Choirs Drawing attention to the vastness of the solar system has a way of highlighting humanity’s need to steward its small home carefully. In a virtuosic organ transcription by Peter Sykes, the cathedral’s resident organist takes the audience on a tour from Mars (the bringer of war) to Neptune (the mystic), all in Gustav Holst’s inimitable musical language.