ROB DAVIES & THE FRY STREET QUARTET
Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project is a riveting theater piece on global sustainability, the most pressing issue of our time. Grounded in science, elevated by art, igniting response. The program features climate physicist and communicator Dr. Robert Davies, with the exceptional Fry Street Quartet, works from painter Rebecca Allan, environmental photographer Garth Lenz and American composer Laura Kaminsky. A superb blend of emotion, information and high production value graphics.
Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project is an evocative performance about global sustainability that weaves art and science together through music, prose, and stunning visual imagery. The Crossroads Project has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered by science correspondent Joe Palca, and in numerous publications including Yale Climate Connections, Reuters, and The New York Times. The work incorporates Rising Tide (CD on Navona Records) by American composer Laura Kaminsky “some very intense music... each movement was a sonic picture” (ConcertoNet.com) among other pieces. The large-screen projections feature exceptional graphics, original paintings by noted abstract painter Rebecca Allan, and works by internationally recognized environmental photographer Garth Lenz. Audiences throughout the country and beyond have been inspired by this candid, yet artistic response to one of the great challenges the world has ever known.
As featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, at the core of the project is a multi-disciplinary performance incorporating live music, visual art, and compelling science. Using diverse and complementary languages, the Fry Street Quartet joins physicist and educator Dr. Robert Davies to explore the impacts of society’s unsustainable systems, Earth’s rapidly changing climate, and humanity’s opportunity for a new direction. Merging intellectual with visceral, and understanding with belief, the performance weaves together a chorus of artistic and scientific voices responding to one of society’s greatest challenges. Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project offers a profound meditation on the choices before us, the paths they forge, and the
dramatically different landscapes to which they lead.
“The mandate for great and difficult achievement is manifest in the science of sustainability and climate change. Yet information alone has not taken us far enough, nor will it; emotion, as well as intellect, is needed. It is science and art together — the synergy of these two great human enterprises — that can compel a more powerful response by creating both intellectual and emotional clarity.” — Dr. Robert Davies
The show has toured widely in the U.S. and made select appearances in Mexico and the UK. This fresh approach to communicating society’s sustainability challenges draws upon all the senses with a powerful blend of science and art. The Crossroads team incorporates workshops and other campus and community outreach into every tour.
“Now is the time for us to believe what we know.” - Yann Arthus-Bertrand, photographer and naturalist
“The four movements of Kaminsky’s “Rising Tide” track the planet’s basic resources - water, the biosphere, food and human society - in a carefully structured idiom... always vivid.” - The Washington Post
“some very intense music... each movement was a sonic picture” - ConcertoNet.com
“The robust, young Fry Street Quartet was a triumph of ensemble playing.” - New York Times