Touring and the Climate-Smart Orchestra

The benefits of orchestra touring are easy to name. In addition to bolstering the reputation of a traveling ensemble, sharing music with broader audiences fosters cultural exchange, which may be seen as an overall public good. But the environmental toll of touring, primarily in carbon emissions but also in waste production and energy use, is more difficult to measure. Whether a tour’s social and artistic value outweighs its climate cost is an impossible question, particularly for those who would agree that music makes life worth living.

Many orchestras and arts presenters are taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints at home and to work toward greater sustainability. Hitting the road doesn’t mean leaving those commitments behind. Indeed, touring presents a range of considerations around environmental costs, primarily with regards to travel, that call for detailed and direct action. At a time when organizations across industries are taking cues from each other on how to address an urgent global climate crisis, an innovative partnership forged by the National Symphony Orchestra may provide an illustrative model.

When the NSO tours Europe this winter—from Barcelona to Hamburg via Milan—its pledge to address carbon emissions was rooted closer to home. The orchestra partnered with American Forests, the oldest national conservation organization in the U.S., to help fund the restoration of forests in Oregon that were devastated by the 2020 Beachie Creek Fire. As the trees grow, they will remove carbon dioxide from the air, reducing the climate impact of the NSO’s tour. The NSO estimated the tour’s total carbon emissions, which included travel for 123 musicians and their instruments, 50 guest artists, and 60 patrons, then calculated roughly how many trees would need to be planted.

The NSO’s partnership with American Forests will support the reforestation of 660 acres in Northwestern Oregon. “The forests in this region were so severely burned that they have struggled to naturally regenerate on their own,” says Brian Kittler, a resilient forests lead at American Forests. “We’re now able to return trees to the ground using climate-smart practices designed to create the resilient forests of tomorrow.” The partnership seemed like a natural fit, Kittler says, because the arts shape how people interpret the world and make sense of existential issues like climate change. “But we urgently need more organizations to join us at the table and support our planet,” he says.

The funds that the NSO directed to American Forests, which amounted to $7,000, were built into fundraising efforts for the tour, which was capitalized at $1.5 million. “As an organization, your budget is a document that shows what you’re committed to,” says NSO Executive Director Jean Davidson. “Our collective climate pledges need to be a line item,” just as commitments to equity, diversity, inclusion, and access should be, she adds.

Many orchestras and arts presenters are taking steps to reduce their carbon footprints and to work toward greater sustainability.

Climate actions that NSO had undertaken at home at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., including reducing wattage by 95% with LED lighting and switching to digital programs, prompted the orchestra’s board to consider how touring might be done more responsibly. “We’re approaching this from a place of humility,” Davidson says, adding that NSO leadership is conscious of not wanting the partnership with American Forests to seem like greenwashing, or a public gesture toward caring about the environment without additional substance behind it. Other mitigating efforts the orchestra undertook on the tour included a 20% reduction in freight volume, transport by train where possible, and encouraging musicians to bring reusable water bottles rather than using multiple plastic bottles every day.

“It’s incredibly important to be investing in nature-based solutions,” says Richard Phillips, a climate change and sustainability specialist for music at Julie’s Bicycle, a U.K.-based nonprofit that mobilizes arts industries to address the climate crisis. A partnership like the NSO’s with American Forests can help the impacts of environmental action seem more tangible and less remote. “Sustainability work can be quite operational and doesn’t always capture the imagination,” Phillips says. “But this project focuses on something that’s in the public consciousness with the recent wildfires,” which can inspire people to recognize the impacts their own climate-conscious actions could have.

Still, any organizational initiative to offset emissions needs to go hand-in-hand with the best practice of reducing emissions in the first place, Phillips adds. That means scaling down productions to focus on the essentials; packing efficiently, especially for instruments held in more energy-intensive temperature-controlled containers; and routing a tour to minimize unnecessary travel.

But the most significant source of emissions for any tour is one that’s difficult for nonresident companies to control: audience transport to the venue. While the Kennedy Center has shuttle service to and from the D.C. Metro, and a designated lane for ride-sharing, there’s little a touring company can do directly to offset audience emissions in a destination city. Partnering with venues that have their own climate pledges, or including a “green rider” in the engagement contract that specifies both parties’ commitment to reducing climate impact, are potential interventions.

The logistics of assembling a multi-city tour, particularly across international borders, involve a bevy of moving parts, including coordinating artist schedules, managing limited time and money, and handling complicated passport and visa issues for as many as 100 people. It may not be feasible when charting a route, for example, to prioritize minimizing emissions ahead of venue availability. But concrete steps add up—and demonstrate the field’s commitment to advancing climate solutions. That makes a difference when industry representatives participate in broader efforts to confront the crisis.

The League of American Orchestras has long been among the participants in meetings of the  U.N.-sponsored treaty, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), that deals with policies concerning cross-border movements of musical instruments for performances or in trade; some instruments contain wood and other materials that are coming under new environmental protections . “Our effectiveness sitting at that table has been that we authentically aim to be a part of helping to conserve threatened species,” says Heather Noonan, the League’s vice president for advocacy. “We have been working to help the field start to think about sustainable practices on a wider scale,” Noonan adds, noting that the League’s 2022 National Conference included a session on climate change and sustainability. “We want to help orchestras talk to each other about new practices.” (Symphony magazine has reported on conservation and climate-sustainability efforts by orchestras for several years.)

In 2023, the League partnered with global music stakeholders to launch the “Know Your Bow” campaign to heighten consumer awareness of the threats to the pernambuco wood used for most bows for stringed instruments. On February 5, the League was at the table for the first U.S. Music Sustainability Summit, hosted by the Music Sustainability Alliance, and exploring the full range of actions that can be taken, from reducing waste at concert events to offering more plant-based foods as concessions.

Music’s greatest potential to address the climate crisis is the influence it has over audiences, through art’s power to shape understanding and perceptions. But first organizations need to lead by example. “You can only have that positive impact if you’re taking some fundamental actions in the background yourself,” Phillips says. “What we need to do is change hearts and minds; I truly believe that arts and culture is the only sector that can do that.”

The question of what more orchestras can do, both at home and on the road, to work toward greater sustainability will be an ongoing subject of concern and education for the foreseeable future. An industry-wide commitment to change, and sustained communication about innovation, are essential to continued progress. “No one knows how to fully solve this problem; all of us are working with information and ideas available to us right now,” Davidson says. “It’s important that we learn from each other as we continue to assess what else we can do.”