Earth Music
EARTH MUSIC
Conductor, John Warner (2007) explains how his founding of the Orchestra for the Earth provides an important emotional link between classical music and the pressing issue of climate change. The road to becoming a conductor is a long and winding one. Unlike most instruments, practising at home doesn’t get you very far, and orchestras are expensive. In the early stages I was lucky: I had some inspiring and supportive teachers at Radley and was even given the rare chance to have a go in front of an orchestra. I then went on to set up my own at university, trying my hand at a wide range of music from Handel to Wagner, most of it wildly beyond my skills or knowledge but nonetheless making for terrific learning experiences. That orchestra, then just a group of students making music for fun, became Orchestra for the Earth. Like many of my contemporaries, I left university struggling to reconcile my chosen vocation with a deep concern for the state of the planet. The world I see around me is already less beautiful, less biodiverse, and even less safe than that which my parents knew at my age, thanks to humankind’s obsession with extraction and exploitation for monetary gain. The very ecosystems that support life on Earth—us included—are being pushed to dangerous tipping points. It was (and still is) a heart-stopping realisation, one that makes me either want to grab a plane ticket and see the world before it’s too late, or never take a flight ever again because of the planet-wrecking consequences. Either way, I wanted to do something to help. Armed with a baton and a pile of scores, not many options immediately presented themselves. It’s hard to convince an orchestra to hire you before they’ve seen you conduct another orchestra—understandably, and so I realised that the orchestra I had set up at university, to which I expected to wave goodbye as I graduated, was the solution to all my problems.
Before we set off, I knew that the beauty of nature was important to composers and musicians, but it wasn’t until we were out there, playing concerts and stomping the hiking trails, that it became real. Without these places, most of the music we know and love simply would not exist. In an increasingly fast-paced and divided world, we need the arts more than ever to help us make sense of it, to decompress, to bring us together; nature performs much the same function. A world with neither nature nor culture would be a bleak one. So, the concept of Orchestra for the Earth (OFE) formed in my mind: we could use our vocation as musicians to share our love of the natural world and inspire others to protect it. Music has a long and successful history as a catalyst for social change. Live Aid is one of the most famous examples among many, but in 2018, when I founded OFE, there was little focussing on the climate crisis. This seemed to me a huge missed opportunity. Music inspires and unleashes the most extraordinary emotions in us, making us cry, laugh, and dance—even against our will. Few things in society wield that power and it is no wonder that at points in history it has been treated with suspicion and even fear. The toolbox of the climate movement is well-stocked with powerful facts, images, and reasoning: why not add music to that, the one tool we possess with the ability to access the deepest recesses of the human heart and mind? The communal aspect of music is also vital to what I have tried to achieve with the orchestra. The usual channels through which we learn about climate issues—documentaries, newspaper articles, podcasts—we experience alone. The result is that it can feel utterly
Max Verdoes
Ellie Winter
It could give me the chance to keep conducting, while also becoming a way to make a positive change for the planet. As a kind of last hurrah, I’d organised a concert tour of the Alps after our final exams, following in the footsteps of one of my favourite composers, Mahler, who spent every summer up in the mountains
soaking up inspiration for his music. The little huts where he shut himself away to put pen to paper still stand, surrounded by the same stunning mountains, lakes, and valleys he loved. On tour it became clear that this was the start of an orchestra, not the end.
OFE performing at the Gustav Mahler Concert Hall in Toblach, Italy, July 2019. 54
the old radleian 2021
One of the Orchestra for the Earth musicians playing next to the Großglockner Glacier, Austria.
