FSQ Climate Commitment

A note from the FSQ on the Climate and Ecological Crisis

After years of performing and living with Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project, the FSQ’s performance piece on global sustainability, our awareness of the scale and urgency of the Climate Crisis is ever-present. Over the past eight years, we have all been busy taking steps to align our ways of living with a sustainable future: installing solar panels, permaculture gardens, and worm farms, buying electric cars, supporting sustainability education at our university, penning articles and blog posts on the topic, and more!  And while there are rewards in these efforts, we’re also acutely aware that none of it will make a dent on a planetary scale. We know we need a sustained, top to bottom effort to mitigate the worst effects of the Climate Emergency, and that time for meaningful response is short. What else is there to do but all that we can?  

As working musicians, we travel a great deal to perform, and the carbon involved in that aspect of our career presents a real conundrum.  In grappling with this dissonance, it’s been a relief to discover that we are not alone in our concerns. The Music Declares Emergency website serves as a hub for musicians and music industry professionals who wish to face this crisis head-on, by coming together to share better practices and ideas that can help us create a better future through our profession. We invite you to explore the Music Declares Emergency resources page, in particular, for concrete ideas on how we can better live our values inside our beloved profession.  If you’re so inclined, you can sign the group’s declaration and join a community that is committed to a healthier future.  

It is the Fry Street Quartet’s fervent hope that we can all move forward with commitment, compassion, and imagination as we work to re-align our systems of living to work in harmony with the life-support systems of our planet. 

~Rebecca, for the Fry Street Quartet

We commit to:

• Jointly supporting one another, by sharing expertise as members of our collective industry and community.

• Speaking up and out about the climate and ecological emergency.

• Working towards making our practices ecologically sustainable and regenerative.

For more of Rebecca’s writing on this topic, check out these links:

Chamber Music Magazine fall 2020 issue, Our Crises Are Connected by Gabriela Lena Frank & Rebecca McFaul, pg. 46

Chamber Music Magazine spring 2020 issue, Composing a Musicians’ Climate Citizenry by Gabriela Lena Frank & Rebecca McFaul, pg. 27

Connecting the Dots: The Role of the Arts in Unprecedented Times