UN Chamber Music Society Performance for UN Water Action Decade – Averting a Global Water Crisis

Mar 20, 2023
New York, NY | 5 pm; Harlem Stage

Co-hosted by Tajikistan and the Kingdom of the Netherlands

Water as Cultural Heritage: Presented in coordination with the UN Conference on the Mid-term review of the Water Action Decade (2018-2028)

On Monday, 20 March 2023 (Harlem Stage), the UN Chamber Music Society will deliver a performance for the UN Water Action Decade – Averting a Global Water Crisis, presented in coordination with the UN Conference on the Mid-term review of the Water Action Decade (2018-2028), to help put a greater focus on water during ten years.  

Every Drop Counts. 40 per cent shortfall in freshwater resources by 2030 coupled with a burgeoning world population—according to current estimates—has the world careening towards a global water crisis. Recognizing the growing challenge, the UN General Assembly launched the Water Action Decade on 22 March 2018, to mobilize action that will help transform how we manage water. Emphasizing that water is critical for sustainable development and the eradication of poverty and hunger, UN Member States expressed deep concern over the lack of access to safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene and over water related disasters, scarcity and pollution being exacerbated by urbanization, population growth, desertification, drought and climate change.

On this occasion, the UN Chamber Music Society will premiere Archimedes’s Dreams, composed by American composer Evan Fein, which meditates upon the theme of the conference – “Water as a Cultural Heritage” – and the multiple facets of the vital resource of water, and expresses its complex and fascinating connection to our history and the legacy we hope to create. Water is essential to life; its creative forces have shaped our cities, sculpted our landscapes, and washed away disease. It is engaged in an eternal cycle; the water we drink today may once have nourished the fields of Mesopotamia or have been the vapor in a cloud painted by Monet. The horizons of today’s seas are the same ones Leif Erikson and Magellan sought to peer beyond, reminders of a time when oceans were not barriers but rather the highways connecting the world’s peoples to one another. The work’s title is a nod to the great ancient scientist whose inventions continue to shape our relationship with water and remind us to approach this resource with wonder and humility.

SPECIAL THANKS

UN Department of Global Communications