Press Kit: No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us
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| Craig Santos Perez, Poet Headshot |
| Felicia Zamora, Poet Headshot |
| Jonah Elrod, Digital Process Creator Headshot |
Press Release
For Immediate Release: Earth Day Call to Action Concert Urges Immediate Steps to Address the Global Climate Crisis
March 15, 2022, (Portland, OR): An Earth Day call to action concert featuring Portland composer Lisa Neher’s major song cycle No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us urges immediate steps to address the global climate crisis. The concert features the release of a filmed performance of the cycle, the product of an interdisciplinary team of composers, poets, performers, sound designers, and recording engineers from across the United States. It will be livestreamed on Friday, April 22 (Earth Day) at 5:00 pm Pacific, followed by a talkback with the creative team on Zoom. The concert lasts approximately 35 minutes, with the Zoom talkback immediately following.
On the heels of last July’s record-breaking temperatures in Portland, No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us speaks to the gravity of global climate change with unflinching clarity and directness, holding space for the mourning, fear, and anger we experience in the face of this catastrophe and advocating immediate action. Commissioned by mezzo-soprano Quinn Patrick Ankrum (OH) and pianist Elizabeth Avery (OK), the work sets poetry by Felicia Zamora (OH) and Craig Santos Perez (HI). Zamora’s poem takes inspiration from data and interrogates why humans are so resistant to change. Poems from Perez’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier sound a clarion call about environmental justice. The music ranges in style from tuneful grooves to experimental techniques. The final movement sets an erasure version of Zamora’s poetry, in which the blank space on the page is translated into a series of bell-like repeating chords in the piano.
The piece experiments with technology to allows for collaboration without burning fossil fuels by flying across the country. Conceived by Ankrum and Avery as a way to collaborate remotely from across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ankrum and Zamora recorded all of the vocal parts first in small pieces. These vocal events were programmed into software by the project’s digital process creator Jonah Elrod and were controlled during the live performance by Avery using a foot pedal. This recorded performance was produced, mixed, and mastered by Onyx Lane (OK). The work is inspired by Greta Thunberg and dedicated to her generation and those who will follow.
This project was made possible by funding from the University of Oklahoma Faculty Senate and the University of Cincinnati Office of the Vice President for Research.
WHAT: No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us Earth Day Call to Action Concert and Talkback
WHEN: Friday, April 22, 2022 | 5:00 pm PST
WHERE: Livestreaming from anywhere, details: https://www.lisanehermusic.com/savetheearth
COST: Free Admission
Tickets: Eventbrite
For additional information, media materials, and interview inquiries, please contact Lisa Neher.
PROGRAM:
NO ONE SAVES THE EARTH FROM US BUT US
music by Lisa Neher, poetry by Felicia Zamora and Craig Santos Perez, digital process design by Jonah Elrod
Quinn Patrick Ankrum, mezzo-soprano
Elizabeth Avery, piano and live electronics
Felicia Zamora, spoken word
Kate Bohanan, recording engineer
Josh Bivens, video filming
Christina Giacona and Patrick Conlon of Onyx Lane, recording, mixing, and mastering
PROGRAM NOTES:
No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us
As I wrote No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us, a record-breaking heatwave brought temperatures as high as 116 degrees to my city of Portland, Oregon. Just 9 months earlier, we fled our home as wildfires, less than 10 miles away, produced off the charts air pollution for weeks. Climate change, a phrase that has been with me as long as I can remember, is now something we experience on a daily basis.
Craig Santos Perez and Felicia Zamora’s powerful, heartbreaking, gorgeous poetry speaks to this reality with unflinching clarity and directness. Inspired by their words, the piece holds space for mourning, for fear, for anger, for all of the emotions we experience in the face of this global catastrophe. It affirms that we are not alone in our grief, but neither are we off the hook for taking action. It’s a kick in the pants to level up our efforts as individuals and, most importantly, as communities.
The piece was designed to be a remote collaboration between the performers, a way of creating a song cycle during the COVID-19 pandemic and without burning fossil fuels by flying across the country. With this in mind, I wrote music in which one of the performers often leads, providing a pickup or hook to the other. Some movements, such as In the Bloomberg Article, involve almost no syncing between the performers, while others, such as We Want to Believe, work almost like a reverse accompaniment track. Because we had the benefit of pre-recording the vocals, I could ask for layered effects such as whispered or spoken text at the same time as sung text, or for the singer to harmonize with herself, as she does in Among Starving Polar Bears. Mezzo-soprano Quinn Patrick Ankrum and poet Felicia Zamora recorded the vocal parts in small chunks which were edited and loaded into software designed by Jonah Elrod. During the live performance, Avery plays while triggering the vocal events using a foot pedal.
The music ranges in style from tuneful grooves to wild chromaticism and clusters to experimental techniques. As pianist Elizabeth Avery observed during one rehearsal, “once the pianist is reaching inside the piano, you know things are not normal anymore”—and that, in fact, is the point. The final movement sets an erasure version of Zamora’s poetry, in which the blank negative space on the page is translated into a series of bell-like repeating chords in the piano, with individual words or short phrases from the singer hovering in between as a benediction.
--Lisa Neher
ARTIST STATEMENTS:
Craig Santos Perez, poet, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (After Wallace Stevens)
My poetry is inspired by the vibrant biodiversity of the Pacific Islands. I aim to write work that articulates indigenous environmental knowledge and customs, raises awareness about environmental justice and climate change, and inspires readers to imagine and enact sustainable futures.
Felicia Zamora, poet, Tautology of Phrases, Tautology of Mathematical Logic In a Time of Climate Crisis
This poem emerged from the overwhelming data, statistics and pleas from the scientific community about climate change, and how our human habits still refuse to change. We sit at a historical precipice where our depredating actions to land, our lack of a global land ethic, our lack of empathy toward the destruction we cause, and the ignoring climate change evidence, situate us to see Earth, our only home, become unlivable. Battling climate change is not the work of a few. This is collective work—global work—meant for all of us. We must ask different questions. We must shift the very foundations of our economic and societal innerworkings. We must act together.
March 15, 2022, (Portland, OR): An Earth Day call to action concert featuring Portland composer Lisa Neher’s major song cycle No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us urges immediate steps to address the global climate crisis. The concert features the release of a filmed performance of the cycle, the product of an interdisciplinary team of composers, poets, performers, sound designers, and recording engineers from across the United States. It will be livestreamed on Friday, April 22 (Earth Day) at 5:00 pm Pacific, followed by a talkback with the creative team on Zoom. The concert lasts approximately 35 minutes, with the Zoom talkback immediately following.
On the heels of last July’s record-breaking temperatures in Portland, No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us speaks to the gravity of global climate change with unflinching clarity and directness, holding space for the mourning, fear, and anger we experience in the face of this catastrophe and advocating immediate action. Commissioned by mezzo-soprano Quinn Patrick Ankrum (OH) and pianist Elizabeth Avery (OK), the work sets poetry by Felicia Zamora (OH) and Craig Santos Perez (HI). Zamora’s poem takes inspiration from data and interrogates why humans are so resistant to change. Poems from Perez’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier sound a clarion call about environmental justice. The music ranges in style from tuneful grooves to experimental techniques. The final movement sets an erasure version of Zamora’s poetry, in which the blank space on the page is translated into a series of bell-like repeating chords in the piano.
The piece experiments with technology to allows for collaboration without burning fossil fuels by flying across the country. Conceived by Ankrum and Avery as a way to collaborate remotely from across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ankrum and Zamora recorded all of the vocal parts first in small pieces. These vocal events were programmed into software by the project’s digital process creator Jonah Elrod and were controlled during the live performance by Avery using a foot pedal. This recorded performance was produced, mixed, and mastered by Onyx Lane (OK). The work is inspired by Greta Thunberg and dedicated to her generation and those who will follow.
This project was made possible by funding from the University of Oklahoma Faculty Senate and the University of Cincinnati Office of the Vice President for Research.
WHAT: No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us Earth Day Call to Action Concert and Talkback
WHEN: Friday, April 22, 2022 | 5:00 pm PST
WHERE: Livestreaming from anywhere, details: https://www.lisanehermusic.com/savetheearth
COST: Free Admission
Tickets: Eventbrite
For additional information, media materials, and interview inquiries, please contact Lisa Neher.
PROGRAM:
NO ONE SAVES THE EARTH FROM US BUT US
music by Lisa Neher, poetry by Felicia Zamora and Craig Santos Perez, digital process design by Jonah Elrod
Quinn Patrick Ankrum, mezzo-soprano
Elizabeth Avery, piano and live electronics
Felicia Zamora, spoken word
Kate Bohanan, recording engineer
Josh Bivens, video filming
Christina Giacona and Patrick Conlon of Onyx Lane, recording, mixing, and mastering
PROGRAM NOTES:
No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us
As I wrote No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us, a record-breaking heatwave brought temperatures as high as 116 degrees to my city of Portland, Oregon. Just 9 months earlier, we fled our home as wildfires, less than 10 miles away, produced off the charts air pollution for weeks. Climate change, a phrase that has been with me as long as I can remember, is now something we experience on a daily basis.
Craig Santos Perez and Felicia Zamora’s powerful, heartbreaking, gorgeous poetry speaks to this reality with unflinching clarity and directness. Inspired by their words, the piece holds space for mourning, for fear, for anger, for all of the emotions we experience in the face of this global catastrophe. It affirms that we are not alone in our grief, but neither are we off the hook for taking action. It’s a kick in the pants to level up our efforts as individuals and, most importantly, as communities.
The piece was designed to be a remote collaboration between the performers, a way of creating a song cycle during the COVID-19 pandemic and without burning fossil fuels by flying across the country. With this in mind, I wrote music in which one of the performers often leads, providing a pickup or hook to the other. Some movements, such as In the Bloomberg Article, involve almost no syncing between the performers, while others, such as We Want to Believe, work almost like a reverse accompaniment track. Because we had the benefit of pre-recording the vocals, I could ask for layered effects such as whispered or spoken text at the same time as sung text, or for the singer to harmonize with herself, as she does in Among Starving Polar Bears. Mezzo-soprano Quinn Patrick Ankrum and poet Felicia Zamora recorded the vocal parts in small chunks which were edited and loaded into software designed by Jonah Elrod. During the live performance, Avery plays while triggering the vocal events using a foot pedal.
The music ranges in style from tuneful grooves to wild chromaticism and clusters to experimental techniques. As pianist Elizabeth Avery observed during one rehearsal, “once the pianist is reaching inside the piano, you know things are not normal anymore”—and that, in fact, is the point. The final movement sets an erasure version of Zamora’s poetry, in which the blank negative space on the page is translated into a series of bell-like repeating chords in the piano, with individual words or short phrases from the singer hovering in between as a benediction.
--Lisa Neher
ARTIST STATEMENTS:
Craig Santos Perez, poet, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Glacier (After Wallace Stevens)
My poetry is inspired by the vibrant biodiversity of the Pacific Islands. I aim to write work that articulates indigenous environmental knowledge and customs, raises awareness about environmental justice and climate change, and inspires readers to imagine and enact sustainable futures.
Felicia Zamora, poet, Tautology of Phrases, Tautology of Mathematical Logic In a Time of Climate Crisis
This poem emerged from the overwhelming data, statistics and pleas from the scientific community about climate change, and how our human habits still refuse to change. We sit at a historical precipice where our depredating actions to land, our lack of a global land ethic, our lack of empathy toward the destruction we cause, and the ignoring climate change evidence, situate us to see Earth, our only home, become unlivable. Battling climate change is not the work of a few. This is collective work—global work—meant for all of us. We must ask different questions. We must shift the very foundations of our economic and societal innerworkings. We must act together.