History, Art and Engineering Converge in ‘Mobilizing Symphony’ on World Water Day

Italian orchestra and Canadian engineers join forces to explore the impacts of climate change

VANCOUVER, British Columbia & BRESCIA, Italy--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Art imitates life in Vivaldi’s masterpiece The Four Seasons, for which musicians are challenged to create the sounds and sensibilities of nature using unconventional approaches. For Italian conductor Aram Khacheh, the piece also echoes climate upheaval in the 17th and 18^th centuries, making it the perfect conversation starter for World Water Day March 22nd.

“Vivaldi wrote The Four Seasons amid a century of climate-based calamities that contributed to political and social turmoil,” Khacheh says. “Extreme weather anomalies gave rise to uprisings and revolts around the world, showing that climate had a drastic impact on how people lived then, as it does today.”

Khacheh, conductor and artistic director of the Italy-based symphony Bazzini Consort, has joined forces with Canada’s RESEAU Centre for Mobilizing Innovation to create Mobilizing Symphony – a collaborative that uses the arts to explore ethical innovations in society. Their first project, #Water4Seasons, is a series of short video vignettes featuring musicians playing excerpts from The Four Seasons, which are aligned with larger messages about climate, water and community health, as well as the importance of innovative approaches to ameliorating climate change.

Vancouver-based RESEAU designs and implements innovative and ethical solutions for water quality and community health in Indigenous and non-urban communities. Bazzini Consort is a non-profit symphony that promotes classical music heritage through a new lens of non-traditional approaches to storytelling and collaborations. Together, they are Mobilizing Symphony.

“Vivaldi’s work captures the spirit of each season, as well as the human behaviour connected to it” Khacheh adds. “He’s giving a narrative to his music, while using mood and new techniques to convey things like the buzzing of insects and barking dogs, which was very radical for his time. It struck me that there are several parallels between this piece in terms of innovation and telling a human tale about climate, and the challenges and need for innovation we face today.”

The videos will be released on World Water Day, March 22, 2021. Follow our social media:

Bazzini Consort on Facebook: facebook.com/bazziniconsort
Bazzini Consort on Instagram: @bazziniconsort
RESEAU Centre for Mobilizing Innovation on Twitter: @RESEAUCMI

Follow the hashtags #MobilizingSymphony, #Water4Seasons and #WorldWaterDay