Composer Christopher Stark Announces New Album Fire Ecologies out Sept 19 and Gowanus Canal Concert on Sept 27
Composer Christopher Stark and Unheard-of Ensemble Release Fire Ecologies on New Focus Recordings
Album Length Work Commissioned by Chamber Music America
An Exploration of America's Landscapes in the Face of Climate Change
Worldwide Release: September 19, 2025
Album Release Concert Coinciding with Climate Week NYC 2025
Saturday, September 27, 2025
Gowanus Dredgers Bunker, 2 | 19th St, Brooklyn, NY
Canoe Launch at 6pm | Music at 6:30pm
Tickets and More Information
“Projects like these may not reverse the course of climate change, but they do have the power to help us look deeper into places we may overlook.” – Hell Gate NYC on Fire Ecologies
Downloads and CDs available to press on request
christopher-stark.com | unheard-ofensemble.com | newfocusrecordings.com
Christopher Stark, Rome Prize-winning composer, curator, and Associate Professor of Composition at Washington University in St. Louis, announces the release of Fire Ecologies. The new recording, performed by New York based chamber group Unheard-of Ensemble – Ford Fourqurean (clarinet), Matheus Souza (violin), Iva Casian-Lakoš (cello), Daniel Anastasio (piano) – is set for release with New Focus Recordings on September 19, 2025. Originally a multimedia work containing music and visual elements, Fire Ecologies is an hour-long live experience commissioned by Chamber Music America for Unheard-of Ensemble.
The work was premiered on September 18, 2021 by Unheard-of Ensemble at the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, NY. Coinciding with Climate Week NYC 2025, Stark and Unheard-of Ensemble will return to the Gowanus Canal for Fire Ecologies’ album release concert on Saturday, September 27, 2025. The audience can immerse themselves in the experience on the Gowanus, listening to the program from land or on the water. Limited boat access and on-water support are provided by The Gowanus Dredgers. Attendees may also arrive in their own vessels.
In the nearly four years since its premiere, Fire Ecologies has been performed several times throughout the United States with two of its most noteworthy performances taking place at two New York City based EPA Superfund sites. These locations add to the statement of the work itself, aiming to move the conversation about climate change beyond the walls of the concert hall and into nature, striving to bring more attention to the places that need more urgent preservation efforts.
Fire Ecologies incorporates field recordings of the 2020 California wildfires and sounds from Stark’s travels around the U.S. “Nature has always been a central theme in my work because I grew up in western Montana in a very small town at the base of the Rocky Mountains and on the southern shore of a large glacial lake,” Stark writes in an article for Washington University in St. Louis. “But in recent years the inspiration I take from nature has become more complicated as climate change has begun to haunt our planet.”
Stark, who has been praised by St. Louis Public Radio for his “forward-thinking compositions,” has been recognized by orchestras, foundations, and festivals alike for his thought provoking vision as a composer. This creative openness extends beyond just the incorporation of nature and Stark’s message-focused concepts. The collaboration between Stark and Unheard-of Ensemble for both the performance and recording of Fire Ecologies in particular, came together in 2017 because Stark saw he and the group shared a mutual appreciation for acoustic instrumental performance, electronic audio production and video.
The catalyst for Fire Ecologies arose from the month of widespread traveling that Christopher Stark did during the late summer of 2020 around Montana, Oregon, and California, as well as parts of Colorado and explorations of nature from the U.S. heartland surrounding Missouri. “I packed up my car and spent a month traveling…documenting the catastrophic wildfires that were ravaging the American West that year,” writes Stark. Made up of seven “scenes,” Fire Ecologies evokes many contrasting moods through each one.
“They take their titles from pre-existing, nature-inspired music in an attempt to recontextualize these old pieces through the contemporary lens of global warming,” writes Stark. “For example, the second scene is called Jeux d’eau ( Water Games) after Maurice Ravel, and the fifth scene is called “Dypt inne i barskogen” (“Deep in the Forest”) after Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt.”
Fire Ecologies is Christopher Stark’s third full-length album following 2024’s The Language of Landscapes, another recording born from a work commissioned by Chamber Music America. Stark released his debut album, Seasonal Music & Other Works, on Bridge Records in 2019.
Christopher Stark,
Release Date: September 19, 2025 | New Focus Recordings
Recorded on: June 2-3, 2023 at Big Orange Sheep, Brooklyn
Tracklist:
[1] Scene 1 Terra Incognita
[2] Scene 2 Jeux d'eau
[3] Scene 3 Louange à l' éternité de Mère Nature
[4] Scene 4 Infernal Dance
[5] Scene 5 Dypt inne i barskogen
[6] Scene 6 Marche funebre
[7] Scene 7 Terra Incognita (reprise)
[Total Time: 52:43]
Ford Fourqurean, Clarinet/Bass Clarinet
Matheus Souza, Violin
Iva Casian-Lakoš, Cello
Daniel Anastasio, Piano/Sampler
Engineered by Chris Benham
Mixed by Christopher Stark
Album Designed by Sarah Rose Design Services
About Christopher Stark: Christopher Stark, whose music The New York Times has called, "fetching and colorful," has been awarded prizes from the American Academy in Rome, Guggenheim Foundation, Chamber Music America, Barlow Endowment, and the Fromm Foundation at Harvard. Named a "Rising Star" by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, his works have been performed by ensembles such as the Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. Louis Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, Mivos Quartet, and Detroit Symphony. Stark has created orchestral arrangements for producers Nineteen85 (the producer of Drake’s “Hotline Bling”) and Luis Resto (the producer of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”) and is a Creative Partner of the St. Louis Symphony where he curates their contemporary chamber music series at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation. Stark has held residencies at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Copland House in upstate New York, AiR Bergen in Norway, and the Bogliasco Foundation in Liguria where he was the Aaron Copland Fellow in Music. His film score for the feature-length film Novitiate starring Melissa Leo and Margaret Qualley premiered at Sundance in 2017 and was theatrically released internationally by Sony Pictures Classics.
About Unheard-of Ensemble: Unheard-of Ensemble is a Brooklyn-based clarinet, violin, cello, and piano quartet dedicated to connecting new music to communities in New York and across the United States through the development and performance of adventurous programs using technology and interactive multimedia. Unheard-of is committed to the idea that new music belongs in every community, and implements this mission through concerts and educational workshops throughout New York as well as on tour. Unheard-of has grown since forming in 2014 into a nation-wide community across multiple artistic genres. With an approach that is open and welcoming of all voices, Unheard-of strives to be a vehicle for development and growth for voices novel and experienced, experimental and traditional, uncomfortable and accessible. Unheard-of Ensemble tours regularly, commissions large-scale multimedia projects, and runs its own summer workshop for emerging composers, the Collaborative Composition Initiative (CCI). Unheard-of’s Dialogues series brings together composers, artists, and audiences to explore the creative process behind music creation. Their on the water Cultural Ecologies series with the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club, invites audiences to the Gowanus for four multimedia concerts each year utilizing Brooklyn’s own Gowanus Canal as their stage.
Unheard-of was a recipient of a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant to commission Rome Prize-winner Christopher Stark, 2023 Artistic Projects Grant for their Cultural Ecologies series, and a 2020 Chamber Music America Ensemble Forward Grant made possible with support of the New York Community Trust.