This week Realistic Sanctuary blog is pleased to publish an interview conducted last week with Miranda Loud, an up-and-coming mezzo soprano and artistic director. In 2005, Miranda founded Rialto Arts, a non-for-profit arts organization based near Boston, Massachusetts, whose slogan is "Where nature takes center stage." According to Miranda, the idea behind Rialto Arts is for music and art to be a springboard for a vision of a new harmonious relationship with the natural world; here's part one of a comprehensive and engaging two-part interview in which Miranda is interviewed about how elephants inspired her current artistic and musical focus, climate change and more. In part two, she relates her thoughts on causes for hope, recommends a few books and offers her personal interpretation of the term "Realistic Sanctuary."

Sanjay Khanna: For you what is the connection between Rialto Arts' slogan, "where nature takes center stage," and the arts?

Miranda Loud: It is a very fruitful and crucial time for the arts to come together around a love of nature and the planet. The stakes couldn't be higher.

For several years as a performing musician (first as an organist and currently as a mezzo soprano and producer), I had been gaining more acute awareness of the need for a new way of thinking to help our society regain a non-destructive balance with nature. I felt drawn to do something more with my musicianship and my creativity to help heal the world and be a part of turning things around. I had a vision of nature-themed performances that could inspire delight and wonder, and appeal to people directly through the heart. This would make people more open to sustainable living ideas and to one another.

SK: When did you found Rialto Arts?

ML: I started Rialto Arts in 2005 after visiting a safari park on my way back from Montreal to Boston. I was incredibly touched and saddened by the expressions on the elephants in the park that stood listlessly in a large lot completely covered in dirt with one little gazebo for shade. In the eyes of the elephants, I saw how I was also a captive of an unhealthy society in many ways.

I got home to Boston and had an epiphany that I could combine an organ recital with short films of elephants to raise awareness for both elephants and organists.

SK: Please tell us a bit about Rialto's first production and say more about the link to elephants.

ML: I'd produced concerts successfully for eight years prior to founding Rialto Arts, but linking arts with nature was a shift in direction that resonated with my deeper yearnings.

In conceiving this first concert for Rialto Arts (which I started simultaneously to support future nature/music productions), there were a few interlinked ideas. Elephants and organists are endangered and, like elephants, organs are incredibly powerful (the "king of instruments") yet can be incredibly gentle and soft. Elephants also have over a six-octave range in their vocalizations, and probably the most obvious connection is that organs produce low sounds that can only be felt in vibration through the floor, similar to the subsonic sounds elephants produce and hear.

Performed in 2005, Elephants and Organs: From Trumpets to Trunks, the first production of Rialto Arts, was a combination of five short films about elephants with six large-scale organ pieces by a variety of composers-including Widor, Vierne, Franck, Bach, Jongen-and five short movies. I hoped that the performance would inspire people to see the commonality in elephant behavior with some of the best aspects of human nature.

My plan is to replicate this concert across the country by sending the DVD to organists in major cities across the U.S. with a list of music they can choose to play in between the movies. Ten percent of the proceeds would go to Rialto Arts, forty percent would go to the organist and fifty percent would be sent to Save the Elephant Foundation or the World Wildlife Fund. We would work through the network already in place of the American Guild of Organists to reach as many people as possible and hopefully inspire more interest in the organ and in preserving and protecting elephants, which as a flagship species are vital to the survival of several other species.

SK: What are you working on at the moment?

ML: At the moment, Rialto Arts is working from two angles to spark a reconnection to the earth — through nature-themed musical/multi-media performances and through environmental partnerships and information about green living in the program booklets and in movie trailers shown at the beginning of concerts. From what I can tell, Rialto Arts is the first classical music group to be doing anything like this, which is one of the benefits of being a start-up organization. We can be flexible, experimental and daring because we are still so small.

I'm in the process of creating Buccaneers of Buzz: Celebrating the Honeybee, which I hope will be able to tour to communities and highlight the work of local beekeepers, as well as inspire people to think about the effect of petrochemicals and our reliance on pesticides to keep our food sources going at the current levels. Many beekeepers believe that pesticides, particularly ones that remain in the ground for three years, are a cause of weakening bees' immune systems, making them susceptible to a virus that's causing colony collapse disorder. The jury is still out on exactly what is killing so many honeybees, but I hope to discover more in the next few weeks when I interview some beekeepers in Vermont for the movie portion of Buccaneers of Buzz. This will be a performance combining tap dance, African drumming, an original movie and storytelling.

SK: What do you like best about the Rialto Arts experience and mission?

ML: I like the idea that people can come to an event and something good happens just because they showed up. For example, since Rialto Arts was founded, we have planted a tree for every audience member by sending one dollar for each person to American Forests, our partner. Because of our audience, over two thousand trees have been planted. I've learned that you can't inspire people with a sense of duty and guilt. They must feel delight in something that causes them to love that thing and protect it. This is where the arts are so powerful as a force for change. The three programs I've created for Rialto Arts have this as a basis — to instill a sense of awe and wonder in the world, particularly at the intricate interdependence of everything and the ability of life to regenerate and constantly differentiate itself.

I see Rialto Arts is part of the movement of thousands of groups, which in their own ways are reinforcing a new mythic ecological vision to counteract our current mythic industrial vision. Thomas Berry, an eco-theologian, writes in depth about this shift in his book of essays, The Dream of the Earth. We as a civilization are experiencing disillusionment with the power of industry and technology to bring us safety and happiness. Simultaneously, we are reweaving new visions for humanity and the Earth.

SK: What is your personal opinion on where we are at with climate change?

ML: We are definitely entering a challenging time where the arts may become marginalized even more as people become more concerned with survival in the face of rising costs of oil, food, water shortages and extreme weather caused by our use of fossil fuels among other things.

I think we are just in the early stages of reweaving our society as it is being dismantled with the rising costs of oil. Technology has improved human life in so many ways, and yet at some level it has replaced our need to entertain one another with our own ability to be creative while interacting with one another face to face.

The Earth is waking us up from our love affair with oil-run industry and I have no idea whether we have enough time or even the ability to stop what is happening to the build-up of methane and greenhouse gases in the air. Our civilization is so much more fragile than many people realize. Yet because I see so many people around me sharing a concern and desire to live more sustainably, I feel optimism in the long-term for humanity. We can't solve these problems we've created with the same mindset that created them in the first place: we need to think dramatically outside of the box and bring in a more nurturing element to counteract the strain of violence in humanity. It's a question of regaining or balance and sense of being part of the world, not separate from it.

I think climate change is terrible and a blessing at the same time because it is causing us to modify our behavior and examine ourselves as a civilization. Thomas Berry would say that we are the earth examining itself.

SK: How can the arts (music, drama, visual art, etc.) contribute to a growing awareness of the human condition as it relates to the environment?

ML: The arts give us an excuse to slow down. People are so hungry for this. Technology seems to save us time by allowing us to get places faster, reach people sooner, meet deadlines faster, write and publish essays or memos quicker, yet the irony is that it raises the bar for everyone which makes us all feel more burdened to be even more efficient and productive.

We often forget that the real communication comes between the words, in the silences where we digest what the person has said and new thoughts arise. When we sit together in an audience and wait for a piece of music to start or listen to the echoes of it fade away, we become aware of our commonality and of the spiritual nature of our beings. Live performance organizes silence for us.

The arts can provide a forum for new ways of listening and learning. They inspire us, they can make us laugh and delight us and, when focused on nature, they can cause a huge longing in us which leads to curiosity beyond the concert hall.

According to Thomas Aquinas, there are three good ways people can enjoy exploring the infinite (as opposed to seeking it in a materialistic consumer mentality):

1. The human mind you can never learn too much, so learning combats materialism and consumerism (boredom).
2. Our hearts have no limit on the capacity to love.
3. With the use of our hands, human ingenuity and imagination is infinite.

There is so much we don't know about other creatures, not to mention our own bodies. Millions of things happen inside each of us each day without our minds getting involved. We are walking mysteries.

End of part one of the interview with Miranda Loud. Part two of the interview to come on Thursday, May 5, 2008.

For more information, Miranda's personal web site is at http://www.mirandaloud.com, while Rialto Arts' web site can be found at http://www.rialtoarts.org. Miranda can be emailed at admin AT rialtoarts DOT org.