This Sounds like Science: Music and the Climate Crisis

City Recital Hall and Inspiring Australia invite you to explore music on a different level in our free lunchtime series This Sounds Like Science.

Everybody knows that music can be a powerful force, but can music help save the world in a time of climate crisis? Just where does the power of music lie, and how does it move us? How can music be useful in communicating the relevance and urgency of climate science when climate scientists have failed to do so?

Join musicologist and composer Rachel Meyers as she explores 21st Century music compositions through the prism of climate change.

Composer, performer, and musicologist Rachel Meyers considers music, sound and listening to the world around her in a time of climate crisis. Her PhD research focusses on 21st Century composers who have written works with deep connections to the Southern Ocean, all of whom have collaborated with scientists and/or spent residencies and research trips on the Southern Ocean and Antarctic region.

Charting the experiences of a conscious listening practice on the remote Tasmanian northwest coast over Winter, her work Southern Ecophony (co-commissioned by Next Wave Festival and Liquid Architecture) was composed for solo violin and electronics aided by hydrophones, surround sound microphones and an old violin as weathered as the driftwood logs flung on to the shore in the wild landscape. Rachel will share her own and compositions by other musicians that explore deep sonic connections with place.

This Sounds Like Science is supported by and co-curated with Inspiring Australia, the national strategy for public engagement with the sciences.