By Jennifer Junghans

Vocalist and composer Majel Connery will perform her latest environmental composition, “Elderflora,” on Friday, Oct. 11 in Sacramento. Blending classical music with modern technology, she tells the story of a tree from birth to death from the tree’s perspective.

Connery, who has a Ph.D. in musicology, performs her environmental compositions around the world, as a call to action to protect the planet.

“I want to try to use my music to move hearts and ultimately to try to drive policy and create actual change in the world,” Connery says. “I want to do everything I can along with all the other artists and activists to point a finger at this problem and say, please, we have to do something.”

Her environmental activism began with a song she was asked to write for Radiolab about a mother fish. She chose to write it from the perspective of the fish. It garnered more attention than she had ever received from her work before, she says. Then a series of seven songs she wrote about — and from the perspective of — the natural world for Musica Sierra in Northern California’s Sierra Valley also gained popularity in a way she couldn’t have imagined.

She knew there was something special about this first-person narrative, talking on behalf of other living beings in nature. It became her signature writing style, which she finds freeing.

As the Earth moves toward climate change — which we don’t know how to control — the most important thing we can do is begin to regard the world as extensions of ourselves, she says. “As like us. Like brothers, like sisters, like family,” to begin to see the world the way it needs to be seen: deserving of the same kind of treatment we would give to each other, she says.  

When Connery was young, her mother introduced her to the book, “Brother Eagle, Sister Sky.” Based on Native American culture, it communicates a powerful message of a different way of relating to the world that is easy and could be so natural, she says. Mother Earth is significant to Native American culture as the nurturer of all life on Earth, and that relationship is rooted in respect and responsibility for maintaining balance with the natural world.

Connery chose to feature trees in her latest composition because she sees a movement happening around them and points to the catastrophic statistics around old growth forests that dwindle by the day. And trees immediately lend themselves to the kind of music she writes, she says.

“They’re so person-like already, they have limbs, they have things that look like faces. We hug them, they feel familiar to us in this way that requires no brain work, and I wanted to capitalize on human beings’ natural tendency to personify trees, to take a closer look at them,” says Connery.

She speaks of the children’s book, “The Giving Tree” by Shel Silverstein. “It just tears your heart out to think of this human-like tree-being that is giving everything it has to humanity, and humanity is not giving back.”

To give the natural world a voice, Connery says she needed to find a voice that was not hers. “I think if the world has a voice, it’s going to sound like something very different from our human voices.”

To summon nature’s voice, she uses a vocal synthesizer that gives her a dynamic range and power beyond her human body enabling her to “speak with the force and power of a windstorm or the interior voice of a 4,000-year-old tree,” she says. She finds her audiences accept the plausibility of nature’s voice in place of her own.  

“Elderflora” is brought to Sacramento by Rogue Music Project, a local performing arts organization that was launched in 2017 by four opera singers and a pianist to change how opera is perceived by performing shorter productions that were more accessible and adventurous, says Kevin Doherty, co-founder and board president of Rogue Music Project. 

The organization expanded to inspire and invite creativity in the region, producing works by local creatives and other artists pushing imaginative boundaries, such as Connery.

“‘Elderflora’ is music with a message,” says Doherty. “We think that art and music can help shift the paradigm. It can move a needle, right? This is the important thing when art can help move the conservation along. We want to be a part of that.”

At each destination of her tour, Connery partners with an organization or school that is rooted in activism. In Sacramento, she’s partnering with The Table at Central United Methodist Church.

“They’re practicing a kind of radical inclusivity and radical hospitality …,” Connery says. “I’m not a religious person, but I find their mission to be similar to my own in that I just want to reach people and do the right thing, right now.”  

Sacramento is a second home to Connery where she formerly produced and hosted CapRadio’s show, “A Music of Their Own.”

“Just the fact that Sacramento is the City of Trees makes it a really special destination on this tour. I would really be remiss not to hit the City of Trees on the tour about trees,” she says.

Connery will perform at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11 at The Table at Central United Methodist Church, located at 5265 H St. in Sacramento. Tickets are available for purchase from Eventbrite.
This story was funded by the City of Sacramento’s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to Solving Sacramento. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review, Sacramento Observer and Univision 19. Sign up for our “Sac Art Pulse” newsletter here.