PLANT-BASED THINKING
NWEAMO FESTIVAL, BACK FOR 25TH YEAR, TAPS INTO NATURE WITH MUSIC AND ART
Very few festivals try to answer such questions as: “How much do plants feel?” “What happens when San Diego rockers meet up with plant spirits in Baja?” and “What does a (plant-free) Polish accordion-and-violin duo sound like?” But NWEAMO — an acronym for New West Evolving Arts and Music Organism — isn’t like other festivals.
For its 25th anniversary, NWEAMO will explore these intriguing themes Sunday and Thursday at San Diego State University. Then it will return in June for a co-production with Opera Tijuana.
NWEAMO founder and San Diego State University professor Joseph (also known as “Jozefius”) Martin Waters is overseeing all three events. For Part One on Sunday — “Plant Sentience: Can a Plant Chew Gum and Ride a Bicycle Simultaneously?” — he approached San Diego’s Sparks & Vines Collective, a group of artists/scientists.
For its first collaborative project, the collective chose “Plant Sentience.” That delighted Sparks member David Lipson, who had been working with Waters, a fervent plant lover, devising instruments to measure nerve signals in plants.
Lipson, an associate professor at SDSU and a microbiologist, also makes musical instruments, some of which will be on display Sunday. He and guitarist Joel Bakker will perform “Oakestra,” which is also the name of the featured instrument.
“The Oakestra captures the sounds of an oak-tree canopy. After we play, there’ll be an interactive period when people can experiment with the instruments. Some are made from oak branches and acorns,” Lipson said.
His wife, Sparks member Kim Reasor, created an accompanying video for “Oakestra.” Lipson encourages attendees to come early or linger afterward to view the oak-inspired artwork in the lobby. It includes Reasor’s “Refugia,” a three-dimensional painting with its own source of illumination. Mark Title, who contributed cabinetry to “Refugia,” also created “Forest
Vision,” a neon sculpture.
Composer Barry Lockwood will present his recording of “Mission Viejo: A rhapsody on a symmetrical ecosystem.” He also wrote the score for Lucy BoydWilson’s film “Earth | Tree | Sky.”
Two short films by artist and psychic Crystal Daigle touch on nature’s symbiotic relationships.
“I hope people come away from this event with enhanced perceptions of nature and how new information relates to plants,” Lipson said. “Just the fact plants have essentially what looks like nerve signals is amazing and thought-provoking.”
Thursday’s concert features Duo Karolina Mikolajczyk & Iwo Jedynecki. Playing violin and accordion, respectively. The 20-something, New York-based Polish musicians are building an international reputation. They will play Mozart, Chopin, Bartok and an homage to Polish music.
The concert will include flutist Antonina Styczen and cellist Pola Benke, who will play the West Coast premiere of “Kiev,” for flute, cello and classical accordion.
“Kiev” was composed by NWEAMO honcho Waters. Commissioned by Styczen, the piece is premiering tonight in Philadelphia and was partly inspired by Ukrainian video artist Svitlana Reinish.
“I started composing it last April, just a couple months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia,” Waters said. “Svitlana lived in Kiev. In the early days of the war, she had to flee for her life with her mother and cat.
“She’s now living in exile in London. Having someone I work very closely with so intimately affected by that horrific atrocity was overwhelming. ‘Kiev’ came about as a result,” he said.
Reinish previously created videos for Waters’ “The Magic Hummingbird,” an opera that premiered in New York City in June 2022. NWEAMO and Opera Tijuana are co-producing the work on June 3 at CEART Tijuana. Tickets are not yet on sale.
“It’s about three San Diego rockers who travel to Tijuana to perform,” Waters said. “Transformed by plant spirits, they join a group of refugees and travel with them across the border through a magic tunnel. It combines real border issues without being preachy — ‘West Side Story’ meets ‘Harry Potter,’ south of the border.”