Episode 11 — “Lola Perrin”
Composer and climate activist Lola Perrin lived in England before moving to France during the pandemic. Her work
integrates stories and facts about climate change with composed and improvised music, bringing together audience
members, scientists, and musicians in emotionally powerful and artistically resonant ways.
In this episode of “Cool Tunes For A Hot Planet” we interview Lola and hear excerpts from her work (the episode also includes interview segments from Music4ClimateJustice, 2021). Lola Perrin is a self-taught composer and a classically trained pianist. She has performed her own works in the UK, Europe and USA, including works for two, four & six pianos at Lang Lang Inspires (Southbank Centre), work for two pianos (Women of the World), Sheffield Festival of Debate, specially written scores for silent films (including BFI, Barbican Cinema, Bristol Watershed,) and a lecture performance at ‘Women in the Arts’ University of Missouri. She toured ‘Music from our Times’ (Piano Suite XI 2019) throughout north of England and to Switzerland, Germany and Belgium.
She focuses much compositional work on environmental issues; eg turned to witnesses of climate change, recording web interviews with 24 international activists for ‘Now You See It: for piano and an orchestra of words’ (2015). In ‘Piano Suite IX:
Significantus for piano, guest speaker and a conversation with the audience’ (2016), she turns to us, asking audiences to converse about climate change issues during the performance, inviting scores of expert speakers to join her in concert.
She is a publisher and has her own publishing label, Lola Perrin Sheet Music (global distribution through Spartan Press), through which she has published 9 of 11 piano suites, and miscellaneous other works both as books and as downloads. She produced and published self-published a book of compositions and illustrations by children in aid of a cancer charity. She is the founder of ClimateKeys; a global initiative with a no-fly policy in which she and sother artists create concerts in collaboration with environmental experts and hold inclusive audience conversation as part of the concert. To date she has triggered over 70 ClimateKeys concerts in 15 countries.