Climate Keys is a concert and educational project initiated by Lola Perrin – an English pianist and composer. The idea of the artist was to organize a series of piano recitals combined with a talk on global warming and climate change. The performers at the National Forum of Music will be the pianist Joanna Wicherek and the lawyer Agnieszka Frączek, specializing in, inter alia, environmental law.

The concert part will feature works by contemporary artists – it will begin with Ishi’s Song by Martin Bresnick. Ishi was the last surviving member of the Yana tribe, who lived in California and was annihilated by white settlers at the end of the 19th century. He is considered “the last wild native American”. The melody at the beginning of the subtle composition was taken from the transcription and recording of Ishi’s singing. Joanna Wicherek will also perform pieces featuring the so-called toy piano – a miniature piano with a graceful and at the same time a little funny sound – these will be Double Helix by the young composer and experienced instrumentalist Phyllis Chen and Alarm by Miloš Raičković. The pianist will also present the piece Bach – Perrin – Chaplin based on Prelude in E flat minor BWV 853 by Johann Sebastian Bach and Let the Birds Have the Sky by author of the project – Lola Perrin – in which Charlie Chaplin’s speech from the film The Dictator from 1940 was used. The fast-paced and illustrative music of Claude Debussy’s Gardens in the Rain, shimmering with a palette of various colours, will be preceded by a talk and a discussion on choices and actions contributing to adverse climate change.

The programme also includes works by Frederic Rzewski, who died last year – an American pianist and composer, an undisputed icon of the avant-garde. The Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues draws from the culture of the American working class in the 1930s – it reflects the tunes of workers at a textile factory in Winnsboro, South Carolina. The People United Will Never Be Defeated is thirty-six piano variations, the starting point of which was a Chilean song performed as part of a protest – a theme from this work will conclude the meeting.