The Crossroads Project is a unique experience partnering the two great endeavors of science and art. It’s a partnership with a purpose — bringing to bear the power of performance art one of the great conversations of our time — human civilization’s urgent issue of sustainability and the quest for truly meaningful response. Crossroads combines compelling music, spoken word, and evocative imagery in an effort to inspire deep and personal contemplation of this theme. Crossroads seeks to take an audience from intellectual understanding, to visceral experience, to personal resolve.
The Crossroads Project blends powerful music, evocative imagery, and compelling science. Using diverse and complementary languages, The Fry Street Quartet joins with physicist and educator Dr. Robert Davies to explore the impacts of society’s unsustainable systems, Earth’s rapidly changing climate, and humanity’s opportunity for a new direction. Merging intellectual with visceral, the performance weaves together a chorus of artistic and scientific voices responding to one of society’s greatest challenges.
The Crossroads Project came about when renowned physicist and educator Dr. Robert Davies became interested in the broad gap between what science understands about climate and what the public understands. While at the University of Oxford, Davies had difficulty communicating his ideas to the public via his lectures feeling the public wasn’t connecting on a personal level. After leaving Oxford for the Utah State University Climate Center, it occurred to him that maybe music was the answer. His idea was a hybrid event: one that combined a lecture on climate with a musical performance. And The Crossroads Project was born.
Anchored by a new work by composer Laura Kaminsky as well as works by Haydn and Janáček, music is the core of The Crossroads Project. Kaminsky’s Rising Tide is the centerpiece, and it was intended to evoke things like water and glaciers and warming temperatures. The performance opens with Haydn’s “Sunrise” quartet and the final movement, from Janáček’s first quartet, closes the program with its extraordinary emotional soundscape. Striking multi-screen images by native photographer Garth Lenz and nature painter Rebecca Allan are displayed behind the musicians.
Now in its 45th season, Chamber Music Northwest serves thousands of people in Oregon and SW Washington with exceptional chamber music through 100 events annually, including Summer and Winter festivals, concerts in alternative venues, outreach activities, educational programs, broadcasts, and innovative collaborations with other arts groups. CMNW is the only chamber music festival of its kind in the Northwest and one of the most diverse classical music experiences in the nation, virtually unparalleled in comparable communities.
Portland’5 Centers for the Arts includes the Keller Auditorium, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, and Antoinette Hatfield Hall, comprising the Newmark Theatre, Dolores Winningstad Theatre, and Brunish Theatre. All are public facilities owned by the City of Portland and managed by Metro through the Metropolitan Exposition-Recreation Commission. They bring over 1,000 music, theater, dance, and lecture performances to Portland each year. As the 5th largest performing arts center in the U.S., Portland’5 is a national leader in keeping art and culture thriving.
Single tickets can be purchased at the Portland’5 Box Office (1111 SW Broadway) and at all TicketsWest outlets or by phone at 800-273-1530 or online. This event is part of a four show subscription that includes performances by Chris Thile, Brooklyn Rider and Turtle Island Quartet. Subscription tickets are available at the Portland’5 Centers for the Arts box office.