Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice

New Series shines Spotlight on Climate Justice, featuring one of Canada’s top string quartets and the cathedral’s Wolff organ, Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice draws attention to the need for action to reverse the climate crisis, aiming to educate, entertain, and inspire change.

Christ Church Cathedral and the Emily Carr String Quartet are thrilled to be announcing Earth Songs: Music for Climate Justice, their third concert series since their partnership began in 2020. This series of six concerts from February to June will feature one of Canada’s top quartets and the cathedral’s Wolff organ played by a lineup of international artists.

The series will draw attention to the need for personal action to reverse the climate crisis and will include brief talks from climate focused NPOs and advocates with an opportunity to support. Each concert will focus on a different facet of our relationship with the natural world, aiming to educate, entertain, and inspire change.

The first half of the series, three concerts entitled “Air,” “Water,” and “Land,” will see the Emily Carr String Quartet perform commissions by Canadian composers, celebrating their namesake composer’s nature-based paintings. These concerts feature music by John Luther Adams, Maurice Ravel, R. Murray Schafer, Claude Debussy, Marjan Mozetich, and Johannes Brahms.

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 Wolf,” 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, it is among the world’s finest organs.

Christ Church Cathedral’s 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.”

All concerts will be both in-person and livestreamed!

In person tickets – Livestream link