Tesla Quartet's FOR THE TREES Comes to National Sawdust in April

For the Trees is an immersive, multimedia show centered on a new string quartet by Boulder, Colorado composer Jeffrey Nytch and performed by Tesla Quartet. Inspired by increasingly serious concerns regarding the dire realities of climate change's potential to uproot our immediate future, For the Trees features components of live music, sound installation, spoken word, and visual images. Both emotionally and creatively, this new work engages the destructive impact of deforestation and strikes out to motivate action to combat it. A post-show discussion with Nytch in conversation with representatives from North Brooklyn Parks Alliance and the Brooklyn arborist community will provide opportunities for the work's deeper meaning to be more closely explored on both a local and global scale.

The original impetus for this production came from a news report Nytch came across four years ago detailing the plight of Big Lonely Doug, a 1,000 year old Douglas Fir on Vancouver Island, BC, where logging of old growth is an ongoing activity. Spared by the loggers' saw more or less by accident, Big Lonely Doug now stands alone amidst a vast wasteland of clear-cut forest: a potent symbol of the quickly dwindling wonders of some of the earth's oldest trees still subject to commercial logging. A self-described "tree-hugger" since youth, when Nytch saw the article he knew he had to create a piece of music. "Deforestation of old growth forests, especially in places like the Amazon, has been something I've been passionate about for a long time. But I couldn't figure out how I, as an artist, could do anything to address the problem. When I heard about Big Lonely Doug I immediately knew that was the angle I would take with my music: I would try to look at this from Doug's perspective, to try to imagine the depths of time his life represents, the joy of those times before humans showed up and the terror experienced when they did. Deforestation is an ugly business, and while I hope the end result of this show is a feeling of hope and an urge to take action, I felt it was necessary to look at that destruction with open eyes."

With sound design by Nathan Hall, photographs by Canadian photographer T.J. Watt (whose photographs of Big Lonely Doug first caught the world's attention) and a spoken word piece of pre-recorded interviews depicting individuals' feelings and recollections about trees, the show is much more than a concert piece. "It's the most ambitious thing I've ever undertaken," says Nytch.

Praised for their "superb capacity to find the inner heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style, or technical demand" (The International Review of Music), The Tesla Quartet brings refinement and prowess to both new and established repertoire. Dubbed "technically superb" by The Strad, the Tesla Quartet has won top prizes in numerous international competitions, most recently taking Second Prize as well as the Haydn Prize and Canadian Commission Prize at the 12th Banff International String Quartet Competition. In 2018, the Tesla Quartet released its debut album of Haydn, Ravel, and Stravinsky quartets on the Orchid Classics label to critical acclaim. BBC Music Magazine awarded the disc a double 5-star rating and featured it as the "Chamber Choice" for the month of December. Gramophone praised the quartet for its "tautness of focus and refinement of detail." Their second disc on the Orchid Classics label, a collaboration with clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein featuring quintets by Mozart, Finzi, John Corigliano and Carolina Heredia, titled Joy & Desolation, is available now. Tonight's featured performers will include Ross Snyder (violin), Michelle Lie (violin), Edwin Kaplan (viola) and Jia Kim (cello).

Jeffrey Nytch enjoys a diverse career as an award-winning composer, educator, performer, administrator and thought leader in arts entrepreneurship. In addition to more than 30 years as a professional musician, he has also run a small business, co-founded a nonprofit service organization in Houston, performed a wide range of repertoire as a vocalist and served six seasons as managing director of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble (PNME), one of the nation's premiere new music ensembles. In 2009, he joined the faculty of the University of Colorado Boulder, where he serves as director of the Entrepreneurship Center for Music. A native of Vestal, New York, Nytch completed a bachelor's degree at Franklin and Marshall College (double-majoring in music and geology), and earned master's and doctoral degrees in composition from the Shepherd School of Music, Rice University. As a composer, he has received numerous grants, awards and commissions, and his music has been performed throughout the United States and abroad by many major ensembles and artists. Recordings include releases on the MMC, New Dynamics Records and Koch International Classics labels. He has also held teaching posts at Carnegie Mellon University, the American Festival for the Arts and Franklin & Marshall College.

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