Fry Street Quartet Celebrates 10th Anniversary Performance of 'Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project'

LOGAN — Utah State University’s Caine College of the Arts is proud to announce a special anniversary performance of Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project on Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Daines Concert Hall.

The Fry Street Quartet, USU’s resident string quartet, celebrates its 20th anniversary season during the 2022-2023 academic year. The quartet members, Robert Waters (violin), Rebecca McFaul (violin), Brad Ottesen (viola), and Anne Francis Bayless (cello), each teach their instrument as well as chamber music studies in the Caine College of the Arts.

FSQ’s performances, meanwhile, take them around the world and to concerts and festivals closer to home inspire community members and students alike. In USU’s beautiful Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall, the quartet has performed groundbreaking new projects and collaborations to sold-out audiences, including “Rising Tide: The Crossroads Project,” co-created by physicist Rob Davies, who is also an associate professor at USU.

This special season marks the 10th anniversary of Rising Tide, which has now been performed in three countries and more than 50 times in 23 states across the nation.

“This 10th anniversary performance will be our 57th performance,” Davies said. “No one is more surprised that this endeavor, developed right here at USU, has lasted so long and remains a strong draw for audiences around the country and internationally.”

The project has received national coverage in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, and on NPR, among others.

Less surprised is the FSQ’s Rebecca McFaul.

“This is what happens with institutions and communities invest in creative people and give those people creative spaces,” McFaul said. “Utah State University, together with Manon and Dan Russell, created the support we enjoy, built the performance hall in which Rising Tide was workshopped and premiered, and fund scholarships that have made the string program here at USU one of the strongest in the West.”

The project has assembled a diverse collection of internationally renowned artists, including composer Laura Kaminsky, visual artist and painter Rebecca Allan, sculptor Lyman Whitaker, and photographers Garth Lenz, Edward Burtynsky and Lu Guang.

The project began in 2011 when Davies, known across Utah and the country for his work in public science communication in climate disruption and global change, approached the quartet to create a performance that was part science lecture and part concert. Davies’ idea was to bring an audience in, give them compelling information about the interconnected suite of ecological and social challenges they are faced with, and unleash powerful music—and then see where it took them.

“We loved the idea at once,” Francis Bayless said. “We went about creating an early version. It involved music we curated from existing works. It was rough but still had a strong impact on audiences. After our third performance of this version, it became clear to us that there was real demand for this kind of performance, and that to realize its full potential we needed original music.”

Davies restructured the performance into a series of five vignettes exploring the wonder of the earth system that has allowed civilization to arise, the structure of our modern civilization that threatens its very existence, and how this structure may be reimagined. The quartet reached out to composer Laura Kaminsky, known for her ecologically and socially themed work, who quickly responded in favor of composing a piece for the performance.

While Davies worked on the script, the quartet workshopped the music with Kaminsky, who laughingly recalled Davies sending her a graph detailing the emotional arc he was going for throughout the performance.

With support from multiple colleges and departments, the president’s office, and private donors, Rising Tide premiered to a packed house in the Russell/Wanlass Performance Hall in September of 2012, Davies noted.

“The original performance ended pretty dark,” Waters said. “But we all felt very strongly at the time that was needed. Audiences have evolved as public attitudes change, and so that very ending has gone away. Our ending now, while not exactly rosy, is all about offering each audience member a useful mindset.”

Davies said the length of the performance has evolved throughout the years from 96 minutes to a svelte 75 minutes.

The tenth anniversary performance of Rising Tide is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the CCA Box Office located in room L101 of the Chase Fine Arts Center on USU’s campus, call 435-797-8022 or go online to cca.usu.edu.