This story is part of a series about arts and culture in Washtenaw County. It is made possible by the Ann Arbor Art Center, the Ann Arbor Summer Festival, Destination Ann Arbor, Larry and Lucie Nisson, and the University Musical Society.
In creating a multimedia jazz performance about climate change, trumpeter and composer Etienne Charles' goal was to make audiences feel the reality of what may seem an unwieldy and abstract concept.
"The combination of the music, the stories, and the visuals is to really make people feel — and not to understand — what climate change really is," Charles says.
Charles and seven other musicians will perform the resulting piece, "Earth Tones," at the Lydia Mendelssohn Theatre, 911 N. University Ave. in Ann Arbor, at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 17 and 18. The performances will be presented by the University Musical Society (UMS).
"Earth Tones" combines live music with photography and documentary footage from areas around the world that have been profoundly affected by climate change, from the Maldives to the Louisiana bayou.
The result is an immersive experience intended to make immediate, visceral, and real something that can seem distant to audiences who might not have seen the worst effects of climate change firsthand.
"I see it every day," says Charles, who was born in Trinidad and now lives in Miami.
He describes the performance as a series of "scenarios that immerse the audience into what is actually happening, and the causes of it, and the solutions."
But Charles also acknowledges that his interest in "immersive techniques" has a more practical aspect, too. He thinks people's attention spans have dwindled in recent years.
"People won’t look at something for more than a few seconds before they are interested in something changing," he says.
He’s found that multimedia performances have a contradictory effect on his audiences.
"It brings them more into the music, because they look down to see what's going on with the musicians, and then they look up to see what's happening onscreen," he says. "It kind of turns the stage into a big phone."
Charles says "music is great by itself," but growing up in Trinidad, he "always saw music as being a part of something bigger." That means the multimedia performances also draw upon a tradition loosely rooted in Charles’s upbringing.
"Music was a part of something else, whether it was Carnival or church or Christmas or [a] funeral or wedding or celebration," he says.
Throughout his career, Charles says he "was always trying to find these spaces where music had something else to enhance it." He has also consistently worked on compositions that have stretched the boundaries of the form, aiming "to show people things that they probably have not seen."
That’s precisely what jazz is, Charles adds.
"Jazz is always about venturing into the unknown," he says. "Improvisation … is always about trying to create these new, special moments."
One might anticipate challenges in composing a musical piece about what is essentially a massive abstraction. Unlike, say, an historical event, climate change does not have a narrative built into it. But Charles says "the music kind of writes itself."
"The challenges, I would say, really come from figuring out what angle to take," he says.
When it came to "Earth Tones," for example, Charles quickly realized that he wanted to feature instruments made of natural fibers. So while there is a turntable onstage, he says everything else is made from either "stone, wood, or skin."
"I wanted to see … what the sounds that have come from the earth are like, what these instruments can create," he says.
Charles says that means that audiences are "hearing what can be done with a tree, what can be done with a stone, what can be done with a goatskin."
As a whole, he says, "Earth Tones" "tries to show the good and the bad and also show the uncertainty of what's next — because what's next is based on what we do now."
Natalia Holtzman is a freelance writer based in Ann Arbor. Her work has appeared in publications such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, The Millions, and others.
Photo courtesy of UMS.
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