In-Person

Sacred Music and Science of Changing Coasts

Fri Feb 21, 2025 7:30 p.m.—9:30 p.m.
EcoSono Ensemble performing with environmental images projected behind
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https://ism.yale.edu/events/2025-02-21-sacred-music-and-science-of-changing-coasts-0
Sudler Recital Hall
100 Wall Street New Haven, CT 06511
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  • General Public

Sacred Music and Science of Changing Coasts is a concert and symposium featuring the Coastal Conservatory with EcoSono Ensemble and Yale University special guests.

This event will be held in Harkness Hall's Sudler Hall, 100 Wall Street, New Haven, CT.

Integrating eco-acoustic performance with intellectual exchange across science and ethics, the Coastal Conservatory creates immersive ways of listening to coastal change. In this concert, EcoSono Ensemble will perform music made with data produced by the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-term Ecological Research site about sea level rise, oyster reef restoration, shorebird extinction, and sea grass meadows. In symposial reflections, scholars and scientists will consider how music made from sonified data and with ecological relations may be heard as a new sacred music of the environment. Co-directed by faculty from music, environmental sciences, and religious studies from the University of Virginia, the Conservatory has been recognized by the Mellon Foundation, NSF, and NPR for its integrative way into relations by which coasts are being transformed. This event includes Yale students and faculty in live performance and scholarly conversation. 

Speakers and performers include Matthew Burtner, Karen McGlathery, Willis Jenkins and the EcoSono Ensemble.

EcoSono Ensemble:

  • Lisa Edwards-Burrs, voice
  • I-Jen Fang, percussion
  • Kelly Sulick, flute
  • Kevin Davis, cello

Free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Institute of Sacred Music’s Religion, Ecology, and Expressive Culture Initiative.

Contact: Katya Vetrov

Artist Bios

Matthew Burtner

Matthew Burtner (www.matthewburtner.com) is an Alaskan-born composer, sound artist and eco-acoustician whose work explores embodiment, ecology, polytemporality and noise. He is a leading practitioner of climate change music and ecoacoustic sound art, and serves as Eleanor Shea Professor of Music in the Composition and Computer Technologies (CCT) program at the University of Virginia. He co-directs UVA’s Coastal Future Conservatory (http://www.coastalconservatory.org) and is founder and director of the non-profit organization, EcoSono (www.ecosono.org).  His music has been performed in concerts around the world and featured by organizations such as NASA, PBS NewsHour, the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the BBC, the U.S. State Department under President Obama, and National Geographic. His work has won prizes such as the IDEA Award for the climate-change opera Auksalaq, an Australian IMPACT Award for THAW with Legs on the Wall, an EMMY Award for Composing Music with Snow and Glaciers for Alaska PBS, and an NEA Art Works Award for The Ceiling Floats Away with poet Rita Dove. 

Willis Jenkins

Willis Jenkins works is John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Ethics and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. He is author of two award-winning books, including The Future of Ethics, which won an American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence. He is also co-editor of several books, including the Routledge Handbook of Religion and Ecology, as well as many essays along intersections of religion, ethics, and environmental humanities. Jenkins co-directs the Coastal Futures Conservatory which integrates arts and humanities into coastal change research at the National Science Foundation’s Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research site. 

Karen McGlathery

Karen McGlathery is Sherrell J. Aston Professor of Environmental Science and director of UVA’s Environmental Institute, a hub of environmental resilience and sustainability research that connects faculty, students, and citizens to create solutions for a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable future. McGlathery also serves as lead PI of the both the Virginia Coast Reserve Long-Term Ecological Research Project and the Eastern Shore of Virginia Climate Equity Project. Her research group focuses on climate change impacts on coastal ecosystems and communities, and nature-based solutions for climate resilience, including ‘blue carbon’ sequestration. She collaborates with regional stakeholders to co-produce coastal adaptation and resilience strategies, and serves on the Virginia Governor’s Technical Advisory Committee for Coastal Resilience. 

EcoSono Ensemble performing with environmental images projected behind

EcoSono Ensemble (www.ecosono.org) is the performing group of EcoSono, a non-profit organization pursuing innovative sonic creation and ecological sustainability. The ensemble performs ecoacoustic music, a genre of environmental technology-enabled live music. The group gave its debut performance at the 2012 premiere of Auksalaq climate change opera, a production National Geographic News Watch called “a significant cultural event that marries science as the brain, art as the heart and culture as the soul in our search for awareness and sustainability”. EcoSono Ensemble has since performed in Alaska, New Mexico, Washington DC, Colorado, Texas, Virginia, Canada, California, Australia, and Tasmania.