This post was updated April 24 at 9:33 p.m.

The musical climate at UCLA is breaking new ground.

The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music will hold an event called “Climate Notes” at 4 p.m. Sunday in Schoenberg Hall, featuring performances of original compositions by seven students. Rather than just being a concert, the event is designed to be an experiential function through which attendees can learn more about the overlap and connections between music and the sciences. UCLA alumnus Suzanne Weiss Morgen is the donor behind the “Climate Notes” event, which was coordinated to remember her father, alumnus and meteorologist Henry “Hank” Weiss, as part of the Henry “Hank” Weiss Memorial Climate Music Composition Endowment.

“I think for the audience, it will be very interesting to come in and not just hear a straight-up lecture,” Weiss Morgen said. “This event is designed to capture the emotional potency of music and allow the audience to experience climate change in a very different way.”

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Weiss Morgen said her father served during World War II and scored highly on aptitude tests for meteorology, which pushed him to pursue a career in the field. She said few universities had programs allowing students to pursue meteorology degrees, and her father chose to continue his studies in Westwood and graduated as part of UCLA’s second meteorology class. Although climate scientists had yet to declare a climate crisis, Weiss Morgen said her father was concerned about pollution during his career and reported on smog conditions in Los Angeles. In addition to his passion for the sciences, her father was a lover of music and an artist who created pieces using mediums such as ink and charcoal, Weiss Morgen added.

“He was a very creative person, and I think that part of my goal was to create an event where I felt I was really representing and presenting my father’s values,” Weiss Morgen said. “It was very important to make this a public event. I didn’t want to just create a scholarship, which is lovely and important, but it’s not a public learning event.”

Ian Krouse, a distinguished professor in the School of Music, said he realized during the preparations for “Climate Notes” that it would be valuable to incorporate students from the sciences at UCLA in the event in a substantial way. He said he began to work on this goal during the middle of last quarter by bringing student composers and students in the sciences together to share their interests and research. He added that he hopes “Climate Notes” can become a recurring offering at the School of Music every other year. With the School of Music and some of UCLA’s science classrooms situated so closely on campus, Krouse said “Climate Notes” is a promising start to more intersectional collaboration, and he is excited to coach the students moving forward.

Austin Ali, a music composition doctoral student and composition area liaison for the School of Music, is one of the seven student composers whose work will be spotlighted during “Climate Notes.” He said he wrote a brass quintet piece for the event called “A Cosmic Perspective,” whose title references astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Ali said he was struck by a quote of Tyson’s from an interview with Stephen Colbert, where the scientist said the fundamental purpose of space exploration is to allow people on Earth to have a different outlook on our planet – in other words, a “cosmic perspective.” With regard to climate change, Ali said this wide view can compel greater action – as was taken by the American government during the 1970s to reduce chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere.

For the music of “A Cosmic Perspective” itself, Ali said he collaborated with Katie Osborn, an environmental engineering doctoral student who studies bar-built estuaries – places where rivers meet the ocean – along the Southern California coastline. Ali said the brass quintet went out to one of these bar-built estuaries at the Malibu Lagoon, where the group played his composition and filmed a “science music video” of the rendition. During the “Climate Notes” event, Ali said attendees will experience a multimedia presentation as a video of Osborn’s research plays simultaneously with the brass quintet.

“​​My audience is the people who love music, and also maybe people who love science, or people who are just curious about what you can do when you start putting them together, or people who are curious about our planet and action about the planet,” Ali said. “My audience is people who have that curiosity, and I hope to actually emotionally move people.”

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Thematically, Ali said other students have been inspired by environmentalist topics such as monarch butterflies, glacial melting and tipping points. For the sonic components of his own piece, Ali said he blows air into a trumpet while placing a plunger mute on top of the instrument, which replicates the sound of waves crashing against the shore. Each member of the quintet will apply the same technique to different sizes of brass instruments, he added.

Reflecting on his role as a composer, Ali said he used to be more politically neutral in the music he created to try to make it accessible and digestible. However, he said his perspective has changed, and he no longer wants to be agnostic about his music and incorporating political tones in his art. He said weaving science into his music can help audiences be more informed and strengthen democracy.

“The call to action would be to be politically involved and to learn more,” Ali said. “If we’re constantly informing ourselves, we’ll be able to take that action in time and have a planet that we are proud of living on.”