Pianist Ann DuHamel's internal sense of despondency about the magnitude of the climate crisis in the fall of 2019 led her to initiate this commissioning project which speaks to the depth of concern and fear many artists share over the future of our environment. Beginning on January 1, 2020, DuHamel put out a call for scores responsive to this programmatic theme; the response was overwhelming, she received works from more than 170 composers in 35 countries. This album is the first volume of recordings documenting this repertoire, music that DuHamel has been performing live extensively since the spring of 2022. In the course of this endeavor, DuHamel collaborated with experts in environmental studies, hydrology, climate activism, and many other disciplines to expand the conceptual frame of her events. Her uplifting idealism in curating this project is matched by her virtuosity and lyricism in the realization of these evocative works. Erick Tapia’s Solipsismo opens the collection with rich, resonant flourishes answered by liquid chord voicings, performed using a liberal amount of sustain pedal to create a spacious sonic environment. Various forms of solipsism are no doubt to blame for the sluggish reaction of many in leadership positions to the specter of climate disaster. Indeed, Karen Lemon must have had this intransigence in mind when writing Forgive Them Not, For They Know What They Do. A vigorous moto perpetuo texture across registers propels the work’s first section before a reflective second half of thoughtful melodic phrases, lush voicings separated by poignant silences, and a mournful closing hymn. Laura Schwendinger’s Air (from Magic Carpet Music) is abstract and broad, stretching long contrapuntal lines over an expansive temporal canvas to evoke the ephemeral and ubiquitous characteristics of air itself. Juhi Bansal’s sonic painting Land of Waking Dreams portrays a desert landscape, a paean to the poetry of untouched nature. Bansal makes use of a chain played on the piano strings, creating a shimmering timbre. Melting Arctic ice is the impetus for Ian Dicke’s White Parasol. Dicke explores a range of keyboard articulations, and uses dramatic registral contrasts to conjure the cascading consequences of melting on a multi-layered ecosystem. Also inspired by the Arctic, Daniel Blinkhorn’s frostbYte: chalk outline integrates video and audio footage recorded on the Svalbard peninsula between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. Blinkhorn’s electronic part is a mix of immersive sustained harmony, mechanistic, clicking timbres, and processed field recordings, achieving considerable contrast in material and expression across this over ten minute work. Judith Shatin’s Plain Song involves a different kind of electronic part; poet Charles Wright reads his own work in fluid dialogue with DuHamel’s piano, edited and reorganized with a collage approach reminiscent of Reich’s Different Trains, albeit with less of a reliance of overt repetition as a structural strategy. Shatin sprinkles her keyboard writing with magical textures played inside the piano, pointillistic constellations, and impetuous chordal outbursts. Wright’s texts and Shatin’s sympathetic setting speak to our internal grappling with existential hurdles. The recording closes with Gunter Gaupp’s Those Who Watch, an energetic electroacoustic work which examines climate change through the lens of media and industry misinformation and dissembling about its urgency. Taking fragments of news clips and fashioning them into a modular electronic part, the piano soloist plays groove oriented passages in sync with the disparate voices, but increasingly circles in place, as Gaupp distorts the media voices beyond comprehension and the issue is obscured behind the fog of self-absorption. Ann DuHamel’s Prayers for a Feverish Planet, Vol. 1 features music that explores a broad range of aesthetic approaches that are prevalent in contemporary works for keyboard. From electroacoustic pieces using pre-recorded environmental sounds to those integrating spoken texts, and from prepared piano to extended techniques, DuHamel has curated a collection that has engaging contrast and sonic diversity. Even without a shared thematic focus, it would be a compelling recording. That these pieces share a thematic focus on a crisis of utmost concern only adds to the import of the project, and is a great reminder of how artists can join together to voice a collective response to issues of our time. – Dan Lippel