Join the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival for the Fire and Music Project: a series of six concerts across North State California. The concert experience will feature live music, poetry, and videography accompanying stories of fire ecology, indigenous land management practices, and history of California's relationship with fire suppression and prescribed fire. The program features a group of artists who have begun the transformation into fire practitioners. Their stories and performances create an immersive experience that invites audiences to examine their own relationship with fire. The Fire and Music Project was conceptualized by violinist and fire practitioner Ellen McGehee. A co-founder of the Trinity Alps Chamber Music Festival, McGehee saw the potential of integrating natural resource work with cultural events. “As we reinvigorate the arts in our rural communities, we have an opportunity to do so in a way that highlights the issues those communities are facing. For us in the North State, fire adaptation and resilience are perhaps the most urgent.” The musical component of these shows will include selections for strings, piano, and reed organ by classical and modern composers. Historical works by Schubert, Dvořák, and Beethoven, will anchor the program, and will come into clear relief when heard alongside recent music by Danny Clay and Julie Zhu. Zhu's work Solastalgia, a place-based piece written for the project, centers listening and stewardship in the music as inspired by the group’s work with indigenous fire practitioners. Poet Silvi Alcivar will share work written on-the-spot at prescribed burns, as well as aid in conducting the evening’s presence and audience interaction. Live projections of video and imagery will show the musicians and artists returning prescribed fire to Northern California's landscapes, and create an immersive atmosphere. The Fire & Music artists have come together from varied backgrounds with a shared love for our musical craft and our responsibilities as custodians of this planet. They have participated in immersive experiences exploring the world of fire and land management, and they now will explore the intersection of fire and music, weaving together forces that are larger than life to bring awareness in new ways to our most precious elements. Hosted by the Watershed Research and Training Center, the project is supported by funding from the Upstate Creative Corps through the California Arts Council, the Regional Forest and Fire Capacity grant awarded by the California Department of Conservation, the California Klamath-Siskiyou Fire Learning Network, and the Watershed Center. This broad support has afforded access to a statewide network of community-based burning partners, and the project has been pleased to collaborate with the Tribal Eco Restoration Alliance and their Ecocultural Fire Crew, the Big Chico Creek Ecological Reserve, the Butte Creek Ecological Preserve, Verbena Fields, the Butte County Prescribed Burn Association, the University of California Cooperative Extension, the Cultural Fire Management Council, and the Mid Klamath Watershed Council. The Watershed Research and Training Center is an equal opportunity provider.

More information about the programs, performers, concerts, and the festival in general can be found at www.FireandMusic.org or www.TrinityAlpsCMF.org.