NPR
ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
Climate Scientist Tries Arts To Stir Hearts
Regarding Earth's Fate
"The music is intended to make people think about things like water and glaciers and warming temperatures. But, like all art, it's open to interpretation. The project isn't meant to convert skeptics, Davies says. "It's about convincing people who already believe we have these problems to start behaving like it.'"
HEAR FULL INTERVIEW
washington Post
Fry Street Quartet Explores Earth’s Resources in New Works
"Call it eco-art – multimedia works that focus on the Earth’s gifts and support the sustainability of the planet. Together, their balance, blend and rhythmic cohesion work beautifully... Rising Tide is a carefully structured idiom that makes the most of textures, sometimes delicate and almost weightless, sometimes thick and convoluted, but always vivid. Kaminsky manages both tension and humor in the most natural way, and her final movement conveyed a profound sense of philosophical acceptance."
READ FULL ARTICLE
The observer
The Intersection Between Art, Physics, and Our Dying Planet
"Climate change, inequality, a rising tide— these are just some of the issues that the Crossroads Project hopes to draw attention to through the power of music. The quartet has performed pieces from many famous composers, such as Shostakovich and Beethoven, but as of recent, they have mainly focused on performing original works commissioned for this project by composer Laura Kaminsky.”
READ FULL ARTICLE
Reuters
Climate Change Takes to The Stage as Art, Science Combine
"Increasingly, as scientist try to find ways to engage people to act on climate change, they are mixing science and art, looking for a combination that educates, entertains and brings about action. The right balance can be difficult to achieve, Davies admits, but ultimately science and art work well together, he believes. 'It’s really science coopting art in service of effective communication,' he said. 'That artistic sensibility of letting (an audience) interpret what you are doing is completely counter to scientific sensibility, yet in that sense these two disciplines are highly complimentary to each other and each one fills in what the other lacks to communicate literally and viscerally.'"
READ FULL ARTICLE
Boston Globe
Fry Street Quartet Goes Deep on New Album
"Its modes hop from inviting post-minimalism to electrifying dissonance to twisted nostalgia, ending with a pensive ascent. The Fry Street Quartet plays fluently and fluidly, with remarkable unity in unintuitive passages."
READ FULL ARTICLE
ConcertoNet
Warnings About A Most Peculiar Planet
"Dr. Davies is part poet, part NASA scientist, an expert on the fundamental nature of light and information – and a most persuasive communicator on climate change, energy, and sustainability. The Fry Street Quartet were energetic, spirited, each of them delightful soloists and, in the new work, as persuasive as Dr. Davies."
READ FULL ARTICLE
E & E News
A Physicist Lectures on Climate Change with A String Quartet
"Davies found himself floored by the gap between what scientists understood about climate change and what the public did. He assumed the disconnect was due to poor communication and began giving his own lectures on the topic. 'It occurred to me, I'm giving these climate change public lectures and people seem to get it intellectually, but it's difficult to get your brain around the scale of what we're talking about, and I don't just mean the scale of the change, but the scale of the implications for humanity,' he said. He thought back to how chamber music gave his brain the space to unlock the puzzles of physics and think about the problem in a different way."
READ FULL ARTICLE
Yale Climate Connections
Physicist Combines Music, Images and Climate Science
"With original music, Crossroads helps audiences realize how their own actions contribute to climate change. Davies says, 'This process of coming to terms with this knowledge, is necessary and it’s not entirely pleasant. But then we move forward.'"
READ FULL ARTICLE
