Brian Field is spreading the word about climate change—one piano performance at a time
Janet Reynolds
Sep. 22, 2023
Some people join protests to publicize their concerns about an issue close to their heart. Others write letters or make donations. Fairfield resident Brian Field is using music to bring awareness to something he believes is perhaps the pressing issue of our generation — climate change.
Field composed a solo piano suite called Three Passions for Our Tortured Planet specifically to raise people’s consciousness on this topic. The nearly 14-minute piece, which has been performed worldwide and won prestigious music prizes since its release in 2021, has three movements — “Fire,” “Glaciers” and “Wind.”
Not content to simply compose the suite, Field also collaborated with fellow Juilliard School of Music alumna and pianist Kay Kyung Eun Kim to create a nonprofit international collective of musicians called Passions for Our Tortured Planet. The collective’s pianists, who receive the score for free, perform the piece with every penny earned from royalties going to the science advocacy nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. So far Field says the group of more than 70 pianists — a number that grows almost daily and already includes members from every continent but Antarctica — already has raised thousands of dollars for this advocacy nonprofit which uses science to address global problems from climate change to food insecurity.