Celebrating Earth Day: a glimpse into Theresia’s carbon offset initiatives

By Emilia Campagna - April 22, 2024

Today is Earth Day! It's a special day to mark the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. As we celebrate this day, we're would like to share what kind of actions we have taken to offset or reduce the carbon emissions resulting from our orchestra's activities.
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Today is Earth Day! It’s a special day to mark the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. As we celebrate this day, we’re would like to share what kind of actions we have taken to offset or reduce the carbon emissions resulting from our orchestra’s activities. We’ve connected with Matteo Molteni, Sustainability consultant at Up2You, the specialized company that has collaborated with us to device a custom carbon offset strategy for our orchestra.

Matteo Molteni, what does Theresia’s carbon offsetting activity involve?

The carbon offsetting activity spans three years, during which we quantify the emissions stemming from musicians’ travel and consumption associated with residencies and concerts. With accurate data provided by Theresia’s management, we determine the CO2 emissions and their resulting climate impact. Using this data, we compensate by supporting natural and technological projects around the world that are certified for their high CO2 sequestration capacity.

What nature projects are part of Theresia’s offset activities?

Theresia’s offset activities include two significant projects. Firstly, the Rimba Raya Biodiversity Reserve Project safeguards a buffer forest on Borneo Island, Indonesia. Positioned between a nature park and an industrial zone, it effectively limits the expansion of the industrial area. This project holds international recognition, certified by the non-profit organization Verra. Rimba Raya has garnered two additional certifications from Verra beyond the basic one: the first, CBB (Climate Community and Biodiversity), acknowledges its positive impact on the local community and the protection of endangered species, in this case orangutans. The second certification, ESD VISTA, assesses its contribution to the objectives outlined in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Development: Rimba Raya aligns with all seventeen goals!

Rimba Raya protects 422 animal species including one of the last populations of wild orangutans in the world.

The second nature project is located in Uruguay and involves the restoration of the Guanarè Forest, formerly degraded pastureland that has been converted into a forest area. The ecosystem has not only been preserved but also revitalized. The project has earned CBB certification from Verra for its significant positive impact on biodiversity and the local community.

Guanaré Forest Plantation. The project is located in the north central region of Uruguay covering an area of 20,000 hectares, annually 127 thousand tons of CO₂ are captured.

What are the technology projects?

The first projects is situated in Brazil and involves the support for constructing a hydroelectric power plant. Given that Brazil, like many other South American countries, predominantly generates electricity from coal-fired power plants, establishing a facility for producing clean energy is not economically feasible without external support. In the complete absence of national public incentives for such initiatives, obtaining international certification has facilitated access to capital, enabling the coverage of construction costs.

Clean energy: inside the power hydroelectric plant

Finally, in China, the Heqing Solar Cooker Project supplies local communities with solar-powered cookers as alternatives to coal-fired ones. This initiative enables the production of clean thermal energy for heating, hot water, and cooking.

Up to the boiling point… The Solar Cooker allows residents to efficiently replace coal with solar energy

How long have you been working on this activity?

Up2You was founded in 2020 and has experienced rapid growth since then. I’ve been with the company since 2022, initially joining a team of 20 people. Now, we have expanded to a team of 50, marking significant growth both for Up2You and the industry as a whole. Our portfolio of projects and clients continues to expand, partly because of the willingness of some companies to integrate sustainable practices, and partly driven by a growing recognition of future regulatory obligations.

Do you have individual customers?

We operate primarily as a business-to-business intermediary, focusing on companies interested in implementing carbon offsetting strategies, such as the ICONS Foundation. BHowever, we’ve observed an increasing number of individuals seeking information and advice from us. As part of our future plans, we are planning to develop software that would enable you as an individual to measure your own carbon footprint.

Do you have other clients in the music industry?

We have previously provided consulting services to measure the environmental impact of music events and concerts, but this is the first time we have worked with an orchestra on an ongoing basis.

How did you quantify the orchestra’s emissions, and what advice do you give Theresia’s musicians to actively reduce their carbon footprint?

Theresia produced 40 tons of CO2 in 2022 and 34 tons of CO2 in 2023: these values are not particularly high because virtuous behaviours such as using buses and trains for transportation were already in place. If trips were made by plane, the numbers would be much higher! However, there is always room for improvement and the advice is always to carefully consider the logistical aspect, such as combining several concerts in close proximity on the same tour, to minimize travel. Additionally, we recommend the use of trains as much as possible, and if car trips are necessary, to opt for car sharing as much as possible.

Get an overview of Theresia Orchestra’s ongoing offsetting activities.

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Picking a fight… or how to survive a train journey with a double bass

By theresia - April 16, 2024

Theresia's double bass player, Ariel Walton, shares her experiences and useful tips on how to travel by train as a musician: even with a bulky companion!
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Theresia’s double bass player, Ariel Walton, shares her experiences and useful tips on how to travel by train as a musician: even with a bulky companion!

by Ariel Walton

I never thought about picking a fight with a drunk, burly tattooed and pierced guy until he almost sat on my double bass. Let’s backtrack about how I got here…

Hello lovely reader, my name is Ariel, and I have been playing the double bass for most of my life. I’m from the beautiful state of Pennsylvania in the United States of America. As much as I enjoyed living there, there were more music opportunities for me by traveling across the Atlantic to live in the Netherlands.

Beautiful Pensylvania… As much as I enjoyed living there, there were more music opportunities for me by traveling across the Atlantic to live in the Netherlands.

To say it’s been a complete culture shock is an understatement. While I could ramble ad nauseam about the minute details between these two countries, I would like to focus on one today: Transportation.

Like most of Europe, there has been an eco-friendly push to use public transit. No problem if you play the kazoo, but when you have an instrument larger than you, it can pose quite an “adventure.” This includes taking trams, subways, buses, and of course the topic of today: the train.

Honestly, I had no previous experience relying on trains to transport my instrument before I moved to Europe. When I was in youth orchestra, my parents would drive me an hour one way to rehearse in State College. Later, I would frequently go to Pittsburgh, a two-and-a-half hour commute, for private lessons. That is the norm, and it makes sense since 90% of households in the US have at least one car. The car represents flexibility and efficiency to travel wherever one needs to go. Realistically, it was the only option in the area I grew up.

Consequently, I had to quickly learn the dos and don’ts of traveling with my large and cumbersome companion when in Europe. Based on the short time I have been using European trains to travel, here’s what I recommend:

1. DO look for train cars with handicap, bicycle, or baby-stroller markings… engineers have designed them specifically for those items to fit. Your baby — ahem I mean bass will be most comfortable there.

2. DO plan on getting dirty sitting on the floor, in the aisle, or wedged into a door frame. It’s not traveling in style, but it gets the job done.

3. DO pack snacks. No one wants to deal with a hungry and stressed musician.

4. DON’T expect to make every train. Even an Olympic sprinter couldn’t make it across the platform if the area is packed full of people.

5. DON’T forget to smile and be appreciative of the transportation staff. They’re just doing their job.

6. DON’T pick a fight with a drunk burly tattooed and pierced guy in Arnhem when he goes to sit on your bass!

…sitting on the floor of a train… It’s not traveling in style, but it gets the job done.

As climatic as it would have been to tackle that man american-football-style to the ground, I quickly realized it was not worth it to try reasoning with a person who was drunk and twice my size. I simply offered him my seat, which he willingly took. While sitting on the floor was not the most comfortable position, I knew that my instrument was safe from him sitting on it. Did he learn his lesson? Probably not… (the real question that concerns me is what led him to being drunk at 10 am on a train!?)

The one positive aspect of this experience was knowing that I was being environmentally friendly by using public transportation. Furthermore, the project I was traveling for, the Theresia Orchestra, is part of a larger group called ICONS who works with an outside party to carbon-offset all the travel its musicians do. They have projects in four different countries and have already captured 74.44 tons of CO2. By choosing to take a train over a car, these emissions for each individual are more than halved. Additionally, consider that these trains can seat 450-900 people, compared to most cars only seating 5. For perspective, a single average car owner in America produces 4.6 tons of CO2 annually. While public transportation is not the most glamorous way to travel with a bass, I argue it is the sustainable thing to do for our planet.

Bass by the door: at the very least, we will be the first to go down!

Hopefully these ramblings have been insightful and amusing. I’m curious to hear your instrument travel adventures.

Your hysterical-bassist* Ariel

*@hystericalbass is my instagram handle

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Celebrating Earth Day: how Theresia is improving its impact as an orchestra

By Emilia Campagna - April 22, 2023

Every year on April 22, it is Earth Day! Find out what Theresia is doing to reduce its environmental impact as a travelling orchestra.
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Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

What is Earth Day?

More than 50 years ago, a group of activists led by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson launched the movement in the wake of a natural disaster, the devastation of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in January 1969. On 22 April 1970 more than 20 million people took to the streets: the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history and it achieved a rare political alignment. In 1990, Earth Day went global, mobilising 200 million people in 141 countries and bringing environmental issues to the world stage. Over the course of decades, Earth Day has drawn hundreds of millions of people into the environmental movement, creating opportunities for citizens to engage and volunteer in more than 193 countries.

Today, Earth Day is widely recognised as the largest secular observance in the world, marked by more than one billion people each year as a day of action to change human behaviour and forge policy changes at a global, national, and local level.

How Theresia embraces the philosophy of Earth Day

Earth Day calls people to action: we can all do something for the planet, by starting to change habits that are no longer sustainable. Of course, this also applies to Theresia! With the help of project manager Veronica Meneghello, our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) expert at ICONS, we asked ourselves how we could improve our impact as an orchestra and developed a scheme that aims to raise awareness among our musicians and offset their emissions.

We decided to dedicate one of the training modules we offer our musicians to sustainability and ecological transition as part of our capacity-building activities, a programme at the heart of the European funded EMPOWER project. ICONS’ CSR and project manager Veronica Meneghello tell us more…

How do sustainability and ecological transition issues fit into EMPOWER’s capacity building?

We decided to start by raising awareness of sustainable mobility, since travelling, especially long distances, is a fundamental part of musicians’ professional lives, and of sustainable behaviour in general in everyday life. Therefore, on the one hand, the aim is to encourage the players to reduce their ecological footprint and, on the other hand, to inform them about offsetting, namely the possibility of offsetting emissions that cannot be avoided. We created an interactive presentation with quizzes and videos to facilitate understanding of the topic and commissioned an external provider to create a digital guide explaining in detail the two aspects of reduction and offsetting, and outlining the offsetting projects available through EMPOWER.

What does Theresia’s “carbon offsetting activity” consist of?

After the training on carbon offsetting, we moved on to practical implementation. ICONS collaborates with a supplier to offset emissions from orchestra travel. The calculation is done on an annual basis and includes all travel, both from each individual musician’s home to the concert residency and any travel within the residency itself. The musicians who have participated in this year’s residencies are given a personal code through which each of them can offset their emissions, choosing to allocate them to one of the six projects proposed by the provider, which can be environmental (e.g. reforestation actions) or social (e.g. implementation of renewable energy, or training actions).

About 140 musicians got involved, and you met them partly in person and partly online. How was their response to the initiative?

They were quite aware of sustainability and impact issues, but were not very familiar with the fact that the ecological footprint can be quantified objectively, which they found very interesting. Some were a little sceptical about offsets, which is normal: these are issues that create mistrust if you don’t know how these offsets are used in practice in projects, but we deliberately involved our provider to illustrate the different possibilities and also to explain that offsets are not the solution, but only a temporary measure.

When did you first become involved in this topic, and is there a bearing on other ICONS projects?

I have a master’s degree in Environmental Economics and continued with a master’s degree in Sustainability in Law, Finance and Management. With the consent and participation of ICONS management, I started a CSR unit – Corporate social responsibility – at ICONS: we are about to launch a working group on gender equality and are also working on projects that include CSR. Offsetting is potentially applicable to ICONS as well, to compensate for all the travelling that is being done for projects, but currently this is not the case. EMPOWER could be a first experiment and then be extended to the rest of the organisation some time soon.

You can follow the progress of the offset program here. And talking about sustainability, clean energy, and climate change, how much do you know about that? Take the quizzes on the Earth Day website and test yourself!

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Discovering EMPOWER

By Emilia Campagna - June 16, 2022

Let's get into the heart of EMPOWER and discover the five different skills that we want our musicians to improve
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How do you empower a musician? Traditionally, masterclasses and workshops are the places where young talented musicians improve their technique, deepen their knowledge of the repertoire, and challenge themselves in playing in front of an audience and with colleagues. Music, though, is not a musician’s entire life, not even when you think only of their work life. One has to manage the business side of the whole thing, take care of one’s physical health, and even promote oneself. That’s a lot.

We kept this kind of complexity in mind when we found ourselves planning the training modules of the capacity-building activity, a program at the very core of the European funded project EMPOWER. We defined five different competences that we want our musicians to improve: artistic performance, naturally, but also organisational, economic and managerial skills; digital and technological skills for marketing and communication; personal development and well-being; ecological transition.

As Silvia Raimondi, project manager at ICONS pointed out, we aim to “give young musicians the skills to manage themselves by the means of business management, communication, by coping with stress and also by acting sustainably”.

Eleven seminars are planned to cover all five areas: the seminars are going to be held mainly online and initially they will be intended for Theresia musicians only, but the plan is to expand our audience in the future including Theresia’s alumni and Theresia’s partners that may be interested.

In this first phase of the project, the formative offer will be tailored according to the specific need of every musician, through a preliminary interview that will state the needs; the plan will be then adjourned every six months.

Teachers involved are Simone Laghi, Artistic Secretary of Theresia Orchestra, who will discuss specific aspects of organology of the classical period, providing information about the development of the Orchestra as a musical entity during the period between 1750 and 1800; conductor Vanni Moretto, who will provide musicians with the tools to understand and interpret eighteenth-century music, through the precious information provided by 18th century’s essayists; musicologist Bertil Van Boer, Professor Emeritus of Musicology-Theory at Western Washington University, who will deepen the general historical context and the question research of sources and references in archives. Looking at the managerial side of a musician’s life, Claudia Crippa, Senior business analyst at ICONS, will hold a two-part seminar focused firstly on improving knowledge about the musical “sector” and their economics, the way economics impact a musician’s career and secondly to improving knowledge about self-resources to cope with the “market”. Charlotte Michi, Director of the Innovation Farm Unit and Project Manager at ICONS will help musicians to strengthen personal digital communication skills, by giving an overview of the different online channels and providing musicians with the basic digital skills to promote their work on them. A second seminar will focus on the creation of content to be shared online. Soprano and performer Laura Catrani will guide musicians to experiment with the beneficial effects of postural techniques and GYROKINESIS® specifically designed for musicians. Speaking of well-being, Alessandra Calzarossa, professional coach and senior HR expert, will address the area of the “inner game” and emotional impact on performance and results to improve the musician’s performance and professionalism. Last but not least, Veronica Meneghello, Project coordinator for national and international projects on sustainability in ICONS, will help musicians to understand how to improve their knowledge of the environmental impact of their lifestyle choices, especially those connected to their work and travels, and thus lower it.

The series of seminars will start during the next residency and will be focused on well-being through the practice of postural techniques and GYROKINESIS®. Stay tuned to read further details on both the residency and the seminar on our blog!

Download our catalogue and find more about the capacity building program

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