SARANAC LAKE | Visitors to Lake Champlain will soon be able to learn about the ecological and cultural diversity of the lake and its surrounding area through music and sound.
The Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA) has been awarded a $40,000 grant to support an interpretive music project that celebrates regional biodiversity and human diversity while engaging American and Canadian audiences in a shared artistic experience of the Champlain Basin.
The “Watershed Voices” project — a collaboration of regional partners including ANCA’s Adirondack Diversity Initiative and McClure Productions Inc. — was awarded the grant through the Lake Champlain Basin Artist-in-Residence Program and NEIWPCC, a regional commission that helps the states of the Northeast preserve and advance water quality.
“Art and nature are in direct conversation. Art is the investigation and/or observation of nature. As a working artist in my current position, I am thrilled to see nature being translated this way,” said Adirondack Diversity Director Tiffany Rea-Fisher, who is also a dancer and choreographer.
Paul Smith’s College professor, eco-musician and composer Glenn McClure will serve as the lead composer for the Watershed Voices project. The core musical content, made up of melodies and chord progressions, will be driven by lake core data collected and curated by Dr. Curt Stager of Paul Smith’s College. These lake core samples represent thousands of years of climate history and human intervention in the Champlain Basin.
“Just as we learn from a young age to translate data into pictures — like line and bar graphs — we can also translate data in musical notes through modular mathematics,” said McClure. “This presents a tangible link between the subject and the musical expression.”
Read the full story in the Sun Community News.