Scherpdenkers: Joyeeta Gupta and Lonneke van Straalen & co - Climate Justice in Four Seasons

Climate Justice at Four Seasons

Vivaldi wrote a hit 300 years ago. With The Four Seasons, the seasons have been audible in concert halls for centuries. But the world is subject to major change. Summer can now feel like autumn. We are struggling with severe flooding. Snow and an Eleven Cities Tour are no longer self-evident in the winter. How do those seasons sound in the twenty-first century? Violinist Lonneke van Straalen asked Trevor Grahl and Composer of the Fatherland Anne Maartje Lemereis to capture the current climate conditions in music. Both composers are inspired by the ideas of climate scientist Joyeeta Gupta, winner of the prestigious Spinoza Prize, the Dutch version of the Nobel Prize. How can we think about possibilities without getting bogged down in doom scenarios?

Joyeeta Gupta

Climate scientist Joyeeta Gupta is a professor at the University of Amsterdam and at the IHE-Delft Institute for Water Education. For more than three decades, she has been working on climate issues, particularly climate justice. Her work has been widely praised, including the Spinoza Prize, and she was co-author of the climate report that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In other words, a Nobel Prize winner in Sharp Thinkers! Gupta's ideas and music meet during this concert, which, based on Vivaldi's The Four Seasons and two new Four Seasons, outlines a picture of the relationship between man and nature.