Inspiration struck Peter Kiesewalter during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolation coupled with slowing down opened the New York City-based musician eyes and ears to nature, in particular to moths.
He grew up in Canada where he studied clarinet and saxophone performance. When life shut down in the city, Kiesewalter and his family headed to the family cottage in Canada. "All my work had been cancelled. I'm a musician so I was looking at a years-worth of work. That was all gone. We were just sitting there thinking how are we going to pay the rent," Kiesewalter says.
Enter brother Tobi. "He's an interpretive naturalist, a park ranger. That summer, he's already a birder, but he took up mothing. And I was just blown away when I saw [what] he was taking just on his camera. My mind was blown," he explains.
Although he'd been going to the family cottage for 45 years, Kiesewalter had never realized the sheer diversity and species of moths. "I thought there were two and there's 160,000; 2 or 3,000 of which are sort of focused in this part of the country."
He wondered if he could create a show about the fascinating creatures. "That took a little bit of time because at first singing about the lifecycle about moths and catepillars is not very poetic."
But Kiesewalter found similarities between moths and humans — his family in particular and their migration from Germany to Canada in the 1950s.
And he found he shares some moth-like qualities. "I'm nocturnal, I come out at nighttime. I'm highly adaptive as a a musician, I have to adapt to things. So I felt resonance in the moths and I thought it would be interesting if I could put together an hour or 75 minute show based around these creatures," he says.
That distillation — The Moth Project — became more personal than Kiesewalter had originally anticipated. "There's a lot of moth imagery, a lot of moth science, a lot of moth mythology but really I'm talking about myself and other immigrants, in this case of my parents coming from Europe, especially from Germany. It's lay low, don't stick out, don't tell people you're German. And they have to sort of ease their way into North American society on the low down," Kiesewalter says.
What audiences see during a performance is Kiesewalter at a keyboard and his partner and violinist Whitney La Grange both dressed in white. "They see a huge video screen and we disappear into the projections and there's projections on us for about 70 minutes. And there's 12 songs, which are quite eclectic ... to reflect the diversity of the moth species themselves and the natural world."
One song. called "Reciprocity," is inspired the by the words and work of Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kiesewalter says reading her book Braiding Sweetgrass that summer of 2020 changed his life. "She says in a world that gives us strawberries, maple syrup, Douglas firs, sandhill cranes, isn't it time that we pay attention? What can I repay the earth for the privilege of breath. When I heard that, I lost it."
Another piece, called "In My Dream," written by his longtime friend, collaborator and fellow Canadian Jane Siberry is deeply personal — both to the composer and Kiesewalter.
Throughout his life, Kiesewalter has never remembered his dreams, except when his older brother died. "From that day on for two years I had the same dream every single night. ... We were walking his dog every night. Given the whole connection that moths as a species have with dreams, I felt it was an appropriate and fitting tune for the show," he says.
The Moth Project's spare yet high-tech production hit the road in 2022.
One of their first audiences was 1,000 biologists. "We were invited through my little brother ... to a conference every year of National Association of Interpretation. In 2022, it was in Cleveland," Kiesewalter recalls.
The idea of performing for 1,000 scientists was a bit intimidating, but to Kiesewalter's surprise, "A number of them came up to us in tears afterwards and said this is exactly what we've been looking for, this is what we need. Scientists, 'We need to get together with you guys — with artists — cause no one is listening to us. The earth has been screaming this from the top of its lungs and no one pays attention.'"
Then and there he says he knew he was on to something.
Kiesewalter intends to continue to share his connection to the natural world with people through music, story and moths. That's what he'll be doing in Madison, Wisconsin on Thursday, October 24.
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