JOHNSON CITY – East Tennessee State University College of Arts and Sciences Basler Chair Jason Davis will present a performance of environmental music on Friday, Oct. 14 at 7:30 p.m. at the Martin Center for the Arts.
Davis is a composer, bassist and the director of Climate Stories Project, an educational and artistic forum for sharing personal stories about climate change.
The event, hosted by the Department of Music, is free and open to the public.
“Jason will present his music which is based on interviews and recordings of oral histories from communities facing climate challenges,” said Dr. Mimi Perreault, an assistant professor in the Department of Media and Communication.
The concert will include pieces for solo double bass as well as for an ensemble of ETSU music faculty. The musicians will improvise to recorded sounds of the natural world and perform music that features recorded voices of interviewees speaking about their personal responses to the climate crisis, organizers said.
Davis will begin the event with a short presentation about climate storytelling and musical creation.
“One way to promote climate action is to engage with climate change through the creative arts, allowing us to get out of our habitual responses to challenges and find positive and inclusive ways forward,” said Davis.
This performance is the first in a series of events Davis is holding in the fields of environmental oral history, music and community engagement.
Davis will host an event in partnership with the Department of Sustainability titled
“What’s your climate story?” on Oct. 26 from 5-6:30 p.m. in the East Tennessee Room
of the D.P. Culp Student Center. Davis is also teaching a Media and Communication
course titled “Documenting Environmental Oral History” this semester which will share
environmental oral histories with a public exhibit at the end of the term.
In 1994, the university named the Wayne G. Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric, and Science in honor of Basler, who has continuously supported the university over the years.
Learn more about Davis, and the events he is leading this semester, at etsu.edu/cas/basler.php.