Artivist Series - Sophie Davis
Sophie Davis is an accomplished violist and member of Halcyon, an ensemble dedicated to using music and the arts to cultivate environmental stewardship.
“Music and art can be a really powerful way to share an environmental message without being really dogmatic.
Video conversation with Sophie…click here
What Sophie talks about…
Sophie discusses how music helps define her way of being in the world, in terms of collaboration and environmental stewardship. Sophie with her sister Josie, also a violinist, along with their friends Colin Wheatley, violist, and Ju Young Lee, cellist, formed the ensemble Halcyon. “The four of us inspire each other musically in ways that feel meaningful and unique. Halcyon is an outlet for creative and diverse communication between us as musicians and our audiences. That meaningful communication also connects Sophie to the environment and her love of the ocean. “I strive to incorporate my scientific background into my work with Halcyon with the goal of using music and art to create a new context for scientific data and the realities of the changing environment.
Halcyon’s collaborations focus on climate change awareness. They have collaborated with climate change artist Jill Pelto to paint a watercolor depicting sea level rise in Maine. The collaboration was inspired by Samuel Barber’s musical piece Adagio for Strings. Such collaborations are important to Sophie and the other ensemble members because they “believe that climate change is one of the most pressing challenges and greatest opportunities our generation faces and that it is our responsibility to respond to it imaginatively. Our goal as a quartet is to use music, art and story to inspire our communities to engage with the natural world in ways that celebrate stewardship and respect.”
Show Notes
Pam Ferris-Olson (00:08): The Women Mind the Water podcast engages artists in conversation about the work and explores their connections to the ocean. Through these stories, Women Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and the creatures. Today, I am speaking with Sophie Davis. Sophie has degrees in violin performance and environmental studies at Oberlin College and Conservatory. Sophie has performed at such prestigious venues as the Kennedy Center and was awarded a Fulbright US Student Research Grant to spend nine months in the South Pacific Island Nation of Samoa, where she explored the ways in which the arts can raise awareness of climate change. She is a member of Halcyon, an ensemble dedicated to using music and the arts to cultivate environmental stewardship. In addition to her music, she works as a crew member on tall ships and for the [inaudible 00:01:08] Oyster Company in Maine. Welcome, Sophie. Let me start by asking about where you grew up and your journey to becoming a musician. Were you always interested in music?
Sophie Davis (01:20): So as far as I remember, I was always interested in music. I always had a propensity for humming and I don't really remember a time when I didn't play the violin. That said, I didn't really come from a family of musicians. Neither of my parents are professional musicians. They're both scientists. My mom played some fiddle music and guitar, but generally it was for fun and in the background. So I guess I became interested in playing the violin and being a musician after I was watching my sister start begging for violin lessons when she was six years old. And my parents were a little befuddled by that. And it took a little while for them to be convinced that she should take lessons, but eventually she won and I tagged along to the lessons. And after a few months decided I also wanted to take lessons. So I started playing when I was four years old .and ever since then, it's been a part of my life. I don't remember never playing. So I would say I've been interested in music for as long as I can remember.
Pam Ferris-Olson (02:29): So when did your interest in the environment take root?
Sophie Davis (02:34): I would say that was kind of at the same time. I grew up playing music and I grew up playing outside. So I think both the environment and music are really integral into who I am. And in many ways, my career up until now has been shaped by the fact that I haven't really wanted to choose one direction to go in. So growing up on the coast of Maine, I spent most of my childhood outside and I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity. But I think because of that, I grew up really appreciating a rural landscape and the freedom to just walk out my front door and be in a really beautiful place.
Pam Ferris-Olson (03:16): So tell me more about Halcyon and how you got involved with the ensemble.
Sophie Davis (03:22): Yeah. So Halcyon, in many ways, it sort of formed of its own accord. I've been playing with my sister who is the other violinist in the ensemble for my whole life. And there's really no one else that I would rather play or work with. And for many years we dreamed of being in a quartet together. We played that quartet in high school. We actually both went to Oberlin and played in a quartet together there in the times that we overlapped.
Sophie Davis (03:48): And then after high school, we had about five or six years where we were too far apart to really make playing together a priority. So eventually, when we both moved back to the East Coast, it became easier to play together. And then last year, my sister moved back to Maine and it sort of was the natural way going forward, forming a quartet. And we played a number of concerts in the summers with her husband John, who's a violist. And our good friend, Jay Y, the cellist. And so, we collaborated as teachers, as performers for probably a decade kind of intermittently. And when we found ourselves a little bit more in the same place, forming Halcyon just kind of happened. And we began to perform more and throughout Maine, and then eventually decided we needed a name because people started asking. And from there, we evolved into a more formal ensemble.
Pam Ferris-Olson (04:45): I'd like to know more about Halcyon and how it uses music to cultivate environmental stewardship. Would you provide an example of a performance that reflects this? And please, when you were discussing any visual aspects, describe them for anyone listening to an audio only version.
Sophie Davis (05:04): Yeah. So a lot of these ideas around cultivating environmental stewardship came about when I was doing my Fulbright Grant in Samoa. And that's a part of the world where I think in the United States, we often separate the arts and music. Really. We separate many of our disciplines. And especially from science, science is a very kind of measured discipline. And in that part of the world, in my experience, it really wasn't, it was a part of life in the same way that singing and dancing and music were a part of life. And I was fortunate to attend a climate change conference in New Zealand while I was there. And one of the opening keynote addresses was actually a play by a number of indigenous people that used music and dance and art and photography to tell the story of climate change in New Zealand. And it was short. It was about five minutes, but I found it incredibly inspiring because this was a conference full of scientists, full of a lot of PowerPoint presentations with data.
Sophie Davis (06:11): And they chose to start the entire conference with an artistic piece. And so from that point on, I was really interested in learning and thinking about ways we can use the art and storytelling, music to raise awareness of challenges that we're facing in our environment. So when I came back after that year, we put together a concert that we called Envisioning Change. And I think this was probably our first, most directed performance that was really intended to have a clear message. And we partnered with the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute and the artist Jill Pelto to create a three minute performance that used artwork from the Climate Change Institute. They had an art exhibition that I just happened to see Belfast. And so, it had a lot of images of the Arctic and some of Jill's artwork. And so, we paired this with different music, musical selections, and then showed it for an invited audience to see and got their feedback at the end.
Sophie Davis (07:26): And then also, a number of school performances at middle school and high school level. And so, I guess for some of the details on that, we would play a short piece and have a PowerPoint running in the background. It was primarily imagery. And then in between the pieces, we'd contextualize it with our own personal stories. Sometimes with some fact, but we tried to keep the talking part pretty minimal so that the art and the music would speak for itself.
Sophie Davis (07:53): So that was kind of our first foray into this multimedia presentation idea. And since then, we've collaborated with videographers and a lot of local photographers, some school art classes to create programs that are themed around different things. So for example, our most recent one was looking at winter. That wasn't exactly related to climate change. It was mostly focused on just celebrating winter in the Northern latitudes and looking at how music can sort of inform our ability to pay attention to what's around us.
Pam Ferris-Olson (08:32): So how has your artistic work an expression of you as a person and your view of the world?
Sophie Davis (08:40): In many ways, I think my artistic work allows me to find an intersection between the two things that I'm most passionate about. So music and the environment. I strongly believe in the importance of stewardship and cultivating a norm of observation and respect for our surroundings. I think our lives are so fast paced and so focused on minute details and especially in a pandemic on screens and kind of a virtual reality in many ways. So I feel like we often stop paying attention to the things that surround us every day. And I guess my artistic work seeks to celebrate the places that we live in and draw attention to a lot of the vulnerabilities and resilience of our landscape, especially in a place like Maine, where so much of the state is undeveloped. And there are so many places that we have to explore or not, but I think just appreciating and celebrating that, that's pretty unusual and really important.
Sophie Davis (09:45): And I also think along with that, it's important to acknowledge and just observe all of the critters that live beside us and the responsibility we have to ensure that these landscapes are healthy and appreciated. So I think music and art can be a really powerful way to share a message without being dogmatic, which is also something I really prioritize. I think there's an awful lot of preaching going on right now and that that can be polarizing and isolating. And so, I think music is a way of being thoughtful around it. And that's my hope anyways.
Pam Ferris-Olson (10:24): As an artist, how does your work engage people in caring about the ocean?
Sophie Davis (10:30): Well, I think anything that takes up 70% of the Earth's surface is really worth caring about, especially in a state like Maine, which has so much coastline and where so many of our industries are based on the working waterfront. So I think my artistic work is really based on the projects that I decide to pursue. So this project, which hasn't actually been completed yet, but around whale song and underwater soundscapes is one that I'm really excited about and hope will engage people in caring about the ocean. It's definitely something that most people have never heard before, what it sounds like underwater and it's fascinating and incredibly loud. And that's something I had never known about either until recently. So I'm really excited about that project moving forward.
Sophie Davis (11:25): I think other projects that I'm thinking about relate to sea level rise along the coast of Maine. It's a pretty relevant issue here, and I think something that a lot of people are talking about. And I'd love to use music as a way to contextualize it in a different way. So we've worked with, again, the artist Jill Pelto and actually commissioned a piece from her that looks at sea level rising [inaudible 00:11:54] in Maine. So I'm excited about that. And that's also forthcoming, to be determined, not knowing exactly when we can give live performances again. But I think personally, the ocean is something I connect to at a really visceral level. And so, my work naturally gravitates towards that. And I'm looking forward to seeing where it can lead me in the future.
Pam Ferris-Olson (12:23): I have been speaking with Sophie Davis for the Women Mind the Water podcast series. This series can be viewed on womanmindthewater.com. An audio only version of this podcast is available on the Woman Mind the Water website and on iTunes. This is Pam Ferris-Olson. Thank you for listening.