Sara Fraker, associate professor of oboe at the School of Music, will speak about her most recent multidisciplinary project, “Watershed Soundscape,” as part of the AIAR Speaker Series.
Sara’s innovative collaborations often explore intersections of music and ecology. She collaborated with dendrochronologist Margaret Evans (Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research) and Australian composer Lachlan Skipworth to commission Pine Chant (2021) for reed trio and electronics, a project inspired by tree-ring data and climate crisis. The piece was featured in For The Wild podcast, the Arizona Republic, Arizona Daily Star, and won “Work of the Year – Chamber Music” at the 2023 Australian Art Music Awards.
Most recently, Sara helped build a multidisciplinary team that was awarded a 2024-25 Annual Resilience Theme grant of $100,000, administered by the Arizona Institute for Resilience. The Watershed Soundscape project includes new commissions, concerts, and workshops that explore themes of water stewardship and restoration in the Santa Cruz River Watershed. This work fuses watershed science with sensory experiences to promote educational outreach grounded in Tucson’s unique sense of place.
Fraker, a member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, spends her summers in residence as a faculty artist at the Bay View Music Festival in northern Michigan. Sara is principal oboist of the Grammy-nominated ensemble, True Concord Voices & Orchestra.
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