The Green Room Podcast

The Green Vibes Project (GVP) mission is to inspire awareness and discussion on sustainable music making through new small ensemble commissions, currently focusing on percussion with goals to expand! The project was started in 2018 by husband and wife, Chase and Christine Banks, because they saw a need for sustainability awareness in the classical music industry.

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As the name states, this “green” organization focuses on commissioning music that utilizes metal-based instruments and/or recycled instrumentation (i.e. recyclable materials such as scrap metal, cardboard, glass bottles, etc.) to promote environmental sustainability and provide meaningful repertoire to music literature. Deforestation and over-harvesting of the wood necessary to build quality 21st-century instruments not only impacts accessibility to those expensive instruments but hinders worldwide goals towards defeating climate change. GVP utilizes commissioning series to invite a handful of composers and musicians each year to perform a world premiere concert, including professional recordings that build our database of sustainable pieces.

The Green Vibes Project’s vision conceives a musical universe where not only musicians, but music lovers and audiences, understand the impact they have on the environment and how they can make a difference in it. This community celebrates and supports new music while lessening our impact on the environment through alternative or sustainable instruments. Also, GVP approaches collaborators as an opportunity to share the mission and incorporate them into the GVP Collective, a diverse and energetic group of musicians and composers directly involved with music making. The Green Vibes Project hopes to continue to be a catalyst through which the classical music industry can become an ally in the fight against climate change.