It was a whirl of a fall with an incredible Texas Two-Step! After our amazing adventures in Utah, the Music for the Ocean team headed to the Lone Star State.
Step One: Austin
Located right on Austin’s historic Congress Avenue, we booked the grand State Theater to fill its art-deco halls with gorgeous sounds of the sea.
The fun started mid-day, when our partner Antal Borcsok sent a photo of himself helping to put our name up on the theater’s marquee! He and his wife Alejandra had traveled from Honduras for the show. They happened to be walking down the street just as the letters were going up, and Antal asked if he could place one! That made things feel real!
While the musicians went to the theater for rehearsal, I met up with Antal, Alejandra and Alejandra’s family, Porf and Jennifer Dubon, who helped pull together a few fun treats for the reception planned for after the show. Our partner at Adzentures, Lindsey Conroy, and board member Chantal Piët helped fill the lobby with lots of books and Tela Coral and Music for the Ocean swag. At 6 pm, the doors opened.
It had started raining in the afternoon, and I was worried about the weather keeping people home. But rather than deter the crowds, the water seemed to be part of the theme. Friends and family and people who had just heard about the concert started pouring into the theater. So many fabulous faces arrived to hear the story of Tela’s reefs and to immerse in the beautiful, transformative music. It was an absolute delight. The theater holds about 300 people and it was not-quite sold out, but very close! I loved seeing the students from the coral genetics lab at UT looking especially glamorous at the theater.
Just before intermission, I took the stage to tell the story of Tela’s reefs, and explain why we are working so hard to raise funds to build the lab and biobank in Tela. I was really proud that we had received a $5,000 matching grant from Mike Shogren and Beth Moon. We blew through that match, raising almost $30,000 in donations. I really can’t express how incredible that gift is and how much it means for Tela’s coral and for marine ecosystems in the Caribbean.
The panel after the show was a super fun one, featuring Antal and Misha Matz, professor of coral genetics at The University of Texas at Austin. It’s a bit of a blur to me now, though I moderated it, but the two of them had fun joust about just what it is that has kept Tela’s corals healthy. Misha thinks it’s not the genetics but the environment. Antal believes it’s, perhaps, the black sand that might produce an antiseptic. I wished the conversation could have gone on longer. But we had a reception to get to!
Riding the wave from the night before, Chad, Antal, and I were up early in the morning to visit Saint Andrew’s School, where in addition to Chad and my science/song mashup, Antal spoke emotionally to the students about why he does the work he does to protect the coral. Once again, it was so much fun to watch the students shake the sleep from their bodies as Chad played his gorgeous music. On the way out the door, we stopped by the string class, and Chad sat in with the students on a rendition of The First Noel, it being just a few weeks before Christmas.
Step Two: College Station
The next day we were off to College Station, where we played the Rudder Forum. It was a game day so seeing College Station all gussied up so they could trounce the other team gave a festive air to the town. The performance was a fabulous–and novel–collaboration between the Academy of Visual & Performing Arts and the Department of Oceanography. Earlier in the week, I had given a talk on science writing and coral and jellyfish to a class on science communication taught by Dr, Shari Yvon-Lewis, who said that the department had never had the opportunity to present a concert before. And that’s really what makes this project so fantastic; it brings together art and science in such a powerful way.
The panel following the show included Dr. Chrissy Wiederwohl, who studies Antarctic waters, and was moderated by James Ball, Director of the Academy. The first question he asked was, what does the sea sound like to you? Which is such a cool question. Chrissy talked about the instruments she uses to understand changes in the ocean. Antal talked about the peace he feels when he dives. Chad talked about the bacon sounds you hear, the crunching of thousands of animals. And I too a step back and said that I think the sea is saying that we need to pay more attention to it.
After that, we said so long to Antal and Alejandra. They were headed to Houston to catch a flight back to Honduras. Will Chen, our lighting designer, left with a friend from A&M. Hui would catch a flight back to LA at 6 am. But Chad and Evan Murnane, our lighting designer, and I had the next morning together in Austin. There was only on thing to do. We grabbed snorkels and masks and went diving the city’s iconic Barton Springs. There were turtles and sunfish and the pretty white duckweed flowers were in bloom. It was a perfect way to end an amazing Texas Two-Step.
