What The Trees Know
Evan Chambers
An environmental call for the awareness of trees... their beauty, their strength, and their fragility.
"If you think the trees aren’t talking to you, go out and listen more carefully."
-EC
"Think of it:
their lives begin in fragile mystery, with the blind faith of pale tendrils reaching down into darkness, parting grains of soil and pushing through clay toward the water that they will raise up to build cell upon cell
a flowing column,
up to the breathing leaves.
Imagine:
every single individual tree harbors a whole secret world buzzing with life, every surface covered with uncountable beings, all collaborating in symbiotic creation. This is a wisdom beyond our comprehension." -EC
Deforestation can have a negative impact on the environment. The most dramatic impact is a loss of habitat for millions of species. Eighty percent of Earth's land animals and plants live in forests, and many cannot survive the deforestation that destroys their homes. Deforestation also drives climate change. An estimated 18 million acres.. of forest, which is roughly the size of the country of Panama, are lost each year.
Evan Chambers (b 1963, Alexandria, Louisiana) is currently Professor of Composition at the University of Michigan. His 2007 orchestral song cycle The Old Burying Ground was performed in Carnegie Hall in February 2008; a recording is is available on Dorian/Sono Luminous.
Chambers' compositions have been performed by the Cincinnati, Kansas City, Memphis, New Hampshire, and Albany Symphonies; has also appeared as a soloist in Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra. He won first prize in the Cincinnati Symphony Competition, and in 1998 was awarded the Walter Beeler Prize by Ithaca College. His work has been recognized by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Luigi Russolo Competition, Vienna Modern Masters, NACUSA, the American Composers Forum, and the Tampa Bay Composers Forum. He has been a resident of the MacDowell Colony, and been awarded individual artist grants from Meet the Composer, the Arts Foundation of Michigan and ArtServe Michigan. His composition teachers include William Albright, Leslie Bassett, Nicholas Thorne, and Marilyn Shrude, with studies in electronic music with George Wilson and Burton Beerman. Recordings have been released by Albany Records, the Foundation Russolo-Pratella, Cambria, Clarinet Classics, Equillibrium, and Centaur. His solo chamber music disk (Cold Water, Dry Stone) is available on Albany records.
