Solar Return for Change

Solar Return for Change unites jazz artistry with environmental advocacy, transforming climate research into artistic expression and connecting student musicians with faculty and members of the MIT Climate Project. By giving voice to climate research through music, the project demonstrates how artistic collaboration can provide both a platform and hope for environmental activism, connecting MIT’s scientific expertise with the transformative power of jazz performance to inspire action on the climate crisis.

Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr., is the director of Wind and Jazz Ensembles at MIT, where he serves as music director of the MIT Wind Ensemble and the MIT Festival Jazz Ensemble and oversees the jazz chamber music programs, including three combos, the MIT Vocal Jazz Ensemble, and the Emerson Jazz Scholars Program. Harris is also the creator and director of It Must Be Now!, a project creating music and visual art on themes of racial justice. He is also leading a project combining Brazilian music and environmental research, focused on the Amazon rainforest.

Harris has been highly active with public school students and music educators throughout his career, leading seminars, guest conducting, and coordinating enrichment events at MIT and beyond. 

Biography: MIT Music & Theater Arts

A composer, arranger, pianist, and occasional singer, Guillermo Klein began his craft in childhood in Argentina. When his father gave him a piano at age 11, he promptly began writing songs, inspired by the legendary Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla. Klein attended Berklee College of Music, where his intention to study classical music gave way to his passion for jazz. His colleagues at Berklee—many of whom came from South America—provided the framework for what would eventually become Klein’s main musical voice, the Big Van large ensemble (later called Los Guachos). After graduating from Berklee, Klein moved to New York City and quickly became associated with Smalls, a jazz club where he established a weekly engagement with his 17-piece Big Van band. Smalls was critical in fostering young artists who would ultimately be some of the most influential voices of modern jazz.

Biography: MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology
Social: X | YouTube 

A Grammy® winner, Doris Duke Artist, and Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow, Miguel Zenón is one of a select group of musicians who have masterly balanced and blended the often-contradictory poles of innovation and tradition. Widely considered one of the most groundbreaking and influential saxophonists of his generation, Zenón has also developed a unique voice as a composer and as a conceptualist, concentrating his efforts on perfecting a fine mix between jazz and his many influences. Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Zenón has released 17 albums as a leader. He has worked with luminaries and organizations such as The SFJAZZ Collective, Charlie Haden, Fred Hersch, Kenny Werner, David Sánchez, Danilo Perez, The Village Vanguard Orchestra, Kurt Elling, Joey Calderazzo, Steve Coleman, Ray Barreto, Andy Montañez, Jerry Gonzalez & The Fort Apache Band, The Mingus Big Band, and Bobby Hutcherson. Zenón has given hundreds of lectures and masterclasses at institutions all over the world and is a faculty member in the Music & Theater Arts Department at MIT, as well as the current Visiting Scholar for the Harmony and Jazz Composition Department at Berklee College of Music.

Biography: MIT Music and Theater Arts
Website: miguelzenon.com
Social: Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

A musician in the New York City area for over 30 years, Ben Monder has performed with a wide variety of renowned artists around the world. Monder is an American modern jazz rock guitarist who continues to perform original music internationally with his own quartet and trio and in an ongoing duo project with vocalist Theo Bleckmann. He has appeared on over 130 CDs as a sideman (including on David Bowie’s last studio album, Blackstar), and has released six albums as leader. A guitarist’s guitarist, Monder is also a master of texture and unusual voicings, creating what one reviewer has called “detailed sonic landscapes of mystery and power.”

Website: benmonder.com
Social: Apple Music  |  Bandcamp | Facebook

Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written more than twenty books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, and his latest book is Here Comes The Sun.

Website: billmckibben.com
Social: @billmckibben.bsky.social

Kannan Thiruvengada leads Eastie Farm, an urban farm in East Boston that fosters food security, regenerative land use, and environmental stewardship.

Kannan grew up in a farming family in southern India where life was inextricably linked with land and agricultural adages were part of everyday parlance. After an early career in technology, he responded to his calling and returned to his agrarian roots.

In response to the COVID crisis, he co-created Mutual Aid Eastie and served over 5000 meals every week to food-insecure families in an initiative that also supported shuttered restaurants. Under his leadership, Eastie Farm built the first geothermally powered zero emissions greenhouse in the region, a space for all year growing, gathering, and education. Eastie Farm’s Community Supported Agriculture supports small farmers in the region and serves hundreds of families in East Boston all across the economic spectrum in a manner that destigmatizes food insecurity and strengthens local economy. Eastie Farm connects people with nature and with each other, which Kannan hopes is the ultimate antidote to apathy.

Full Bio: Loeb Fellow 2024 – Kanna

Founded by Music Director Dr. Frederick Harris, Jr., in the fall of 1999, the MIT Wind Ensemble (MITWE) is one of the most innovative such ensembles of its kind, composed primarily of outstanding MIT undergraduates and graduate students studying a wide range of disciplines within science, engineering, and the humanities. Its repertoire includes outstanding traditional works and new music for full wind ensembles, chamber winds, brass ensembles, percussion ensembles, and woodwind ensembles. MITWE has commissioned 55 original works from many prominent composers. MIT Affiliated Artist, renowned composer, and tuba player of the Empire Brass, Kenneth Amis, is the assistant conductor of MITWE. 

Website: MIT Music & Theater Arts

Presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and MIT Music and Theater Arts.