For musician Christine Carter, Project Earth starts in Newfoundland

Christine Carter describes living in Newfoundland as "like living in a National Geographic documentary."

As one-third of the classical music ensemble, Iris Trio, and the only member living in Canada, she has been instrumental in bringing the sounds of the island to the worldwide stage.

She was born in Scarborough, Ont. and moved to St. John's in 2014 to join the faculty of Memorial University's school of music. But her connection to the island began some years earlier, when she attended the Gros Morne Summer Music Festival, now known as Camber Arts, and performed with Dark by Five, the festival's ensemble-in-residence.

Iris Trio: a long-distance relationship

Iris Trio came to life in New York City, where Carter lived and studied for seven years.

Alongside Carter, the ensemble's membership currently includes Bulgarian pianist Anna Petrova, who now lives in Louisville, Ky., and Hawaii-born violist Zoë Martin-Doike, based in New York City.

Although the group has seen personnel changes and relocations, it continues to commission new works and perform worldwide, said Carter.

"When we're on tour, we're rehearsing, we keep trying to refine, we keep trying to evolve what we're doing," she said. 

How challenging is it to keep the trio going when its members are so widely spread out? Carter concedes it's challenging, but they plan windows of time to come together.

"It gives us these really beautiful, concentrated periods to just focus on the trio," she said.

A different kind of Blue

Iris Trio has members in different regions of the continent, but Carter says its current commissioned project, The Blue Chapter of Project Earth, is "intimately connected" with Newfoundland.

"You go to Cape St. Mary's," she said, "it's just the edge of the world, and you don't feel centred in a human environment anymore; you really feel like the outsider now, looking at this incredible ecosystem."

The Blue Chapter consists of pieces composed by jazz pianist Florian Hoefner — Carter's husband — and features poetry written and recited by Don McKay. The compositions are genre-expanding pieces of classical music drawing on elements of jazz and incorporating the textures of lyric spoken word.

"It was really a collaboration made in heaven with those two," said Carter. "Don would write something, Florian would then write [music] in response, and Don would change his poems based on what he heard Florian write."

A celebration of, and appeal for, the natural world

According to the liner notes for The Blue Chapter, the trio hopes the project will help to "illuminate the impact of human behaviour on the environment … while simultaneously giving centre stage to the immense beauty and wonder found in nature."

An artist and an academic, Carter stands with one foot in the arts and one foot in science.

"I'm a data-driven person," she said. "And yet, data also has limits."

She believes music is one way to bridge the gap between the limits of data and the capacity of human beings to make change.

"The arts can help people get their hearts involved so that we care about the numbers and want to make a difference," she said.

The future of Project Earth

Beyond its important message, Carter believes The Blue Chapter is fundamentally a work of art.

"We really care about the music and the poetry and the performance, both live and in the recording," she said.

The trio has commissioned a subsequent Green Chapter of Project Earth, comprising music composed by Sarah Slean and Andrew Downing, featuring poetry by Karen Solie.

The Blue Chapter of Project Earth is scheduled for release April 5 on the Centrediscs label. The trio also plans to release a book later in the year, featuring the poetry Don McKay created for the compositions.

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