Lisa Keating
Kuzma.
Two months ago, musician and conductor Marika Kuzma hadn’t even moved to the New Haven area yet. Today she finds herself having organized an upcoming event at United Church on the Green featuring acclaimed musician Paul Winter, a member of indie-rock darlings the Hold Steady, and a chamber ensemble, amid a host of speakers, all in the name of doing something about climate change.
The concert, entitled “Simple Gifts for Mother Earth,” happens on Sept. 11 at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
Kuzma grew up in Hartford and attended the Hartt School of Music for violin and voice. She then got a vocal performance degree from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and studied at the Salzburg Mozarteum and Vienna Hochschule für Musik. A doctorate from Indiana University in choral conducting followed. All this training led to a 25-year post as the director of choirs at UC Berkeley amid a three-decade whirlwind of musical activity. She conducted ensembles at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., and Stephansdom in Vienna, Austria. She collaborated with Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Orchestra, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and Kent Nagano and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montreal.
“I’ve had a great, really rich experience conducting,” she said — everything from medieval masses to new works by living composers.
Kuzma moved back to Connecticut, to Madison, less than two months ago, ostensibly to retire and be closer to her family, but instead hit the ground running. The cause of environmentalism was in the forefront of her mind. In Berkeley, where she had just moved from, the smoke from the state’s wildfires had even affected life there. Berkeley closed schools and people wore gas masks to get around because the air quality was considered “dangerous,” she said. She decided she wanted to put together an event to help address the climate crisis in advance of the youth-spearheaded global climate strikes to be held on Sept. 20.
“Climate change in on people’s minds,” she said, but faced with the enormity of the problem, it’s hard to know where to start. “I wanted to have music and art and information in equal measure,” Kuzma said. “I want them to inform each other.” Events that relied mostly on information about climate change, she said, could feel “overwhelming.” Music “allows you to come at it in a different way.” The “germ of the idea,” she said, took root in Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which she wanted to conduct. She wanted a diversity of other musical acts as well. But she wanted attendees to leave the event not simply inspired to act, but armed with concrete information about how to act, the next day — organizations whose work they might get involved with, or simple steps they could take in their day-to-day lives.
She is acquainted with science writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben. He connected her with Mary Evelyn Tucker, who teaches at Yale in both the School of Forestry and the Divinity School. “She deals with the ethics of environmentalism,” Kuzma said. The connection between them “seems as though it was meant to be,” Kuzma said.
Tucker was into Kuzma’s event idea. They began organizing it together. Tucker called Paul Winter, whose musical career has centered on environmental issues for decades. He was interested in participating.
Meanwhile, on a quick trip to New York CIty, Kuzma became acquainted with Franz Nicolay of The Hold Steady. Nicolay was into the idea as well, provided that it could be fit into his touring schedule. Kuzma checked. The Hold Steady was playing in Nashville from Sept. 5 – 7 and then in Boston from Sept. 12 – 15. There was a window in there.
Kuzma and Tucker contacted the United Church on the Green. The church had an opening in its schedule for Sept. 11. That date was also free for Winter and for Nicolay. “When the church had the date,” Kuzma said, “I thought, ‘this is going to work.”
Pieces fell into place from there. A few details remain to be finalized, but as the program stands now, the event will be bookended by a chamber ensemble, conducted by Kuzma, performing excerpts from Appalachian Spring. In between, the program will feature short speeches from Tiokasin Ghosthorse of First Voices Indigenous Radio, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Karenna Gore from the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Students from the Yale School of Drama will recite poetry and perform a short scene. Also speaking will be Kazemi Adachi of the Endowment Justice Coalition/Fossil Free Yale; Adrian Adara Huq from the New Haven Climate Movement; Viveca Morris from Yale Law School; Ben Levin from Sunrise Movement; and a representative from CT350.org.
“We want this event to feel like part of the community,” Kuzma said. “We want to draw a different audience — not just people who go to rallies and people who go to concerts,” but everyone.
As the details are nailed down, Kuzma is bemused and delighted at how quickly everything has happened. She recalled talking to people in Berkeley about moving back to Connecticut. “What are you going to do out there?” she remembered people saying. “I don’t know!” she answered. But she did arrive with a direction, and with a lot of experience. “How can I still contribute to people’s lives — individually and communally?” she asked herself.
“There’s a saying in Ukrainian,” her cultural heritage, she said: “‘take it and do it’ — don’t wait for anyone’s permission.” But she’s quick to point out that she didn’t do it alone. That the event has come together in a matter of weeks, less than two months after Kuzma moved to the area, she said, “speaks to how much people want to do something.”
“Simple Gifts for Mother Earth” happens at the United Church on the Green, 270 Temple St., at 7 p.m. Admission is free. Check the event’s website or its Facebook event page for more details.