Music
Press
Balance of Nature: Making Personal Sustainability Choices (excerpt)
By Janice Mason, July 18, 2007
Jennifer White, local musician and environmental sustainability expert, blends her degrees in psychology and physics with music committing what she and her husband Jimmy Sferes call “edutainment.” Through a series of environmentally designed concerts, White shares a background that may not be known to the community.
Sferes and White, calling their duo The Eco-Tones, will perform tonight and Aug. 15 at 7:15 p.m. at the Rocky Mountain National Park Beaver Meadows Visitor Center, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Nature Association. White, executive director of the Simplicity Forum and co-founder and director of the ConservED Project, believes in a more personal approach to going green. Using the term “whole systems health,” White helps to educate individuals, giving them motivational tools that inspire positive lifestyle changes.
According to White, sustainability begins with the individual. She defines sustainability as “helping people achieve the deepest happiness, highest potential and optimum health for all beings for all time,” she said. “It’s not just about being environmentally sustainable, it’s about being happy and learning to be more kind to each other and living in sustainable relationship with the natural environment.”
The couple’s home, studio and vehicle emissions offset the Renewable Energy Credits provided by wind, and their tour bus is fueled by bio-diesel fuel. With a wealth of knowledge, White helps others make the move to an environmentally conscious lifestyle. Through her organizations, White stays busy using a “values-based approach,” helping individuals and small businesses convert their lifestyles in support of the environment...
...As the director of education for the ConservED Project, White uses her values-based approach to teach individuals about sustainability.
“What that does is includes in the process an individual’s own motivation for behaving in a way that reduces their environmental impact,” she said. “It’s not enough to know what we should do. In talking about health, we know what we should eat, that we should exercise, that we should drink water. Everybody knows that… but getting people to change their behavior is a completely different animal. When I work with people… I work with the process of behavior change… and to get them engaged on a personal level… to help people develop the internal motivation and understand why they would want to change their behavior...”
...White is writing a book that will help people make these personal environmental changes. The working title is “Sustaining Contentment: Initiating Global Change from the Inside Out.”
“I really think this is something that we missed in the environmental movement,” she said. “I think the environmental movement (has focused) on telling people what they should be doing, thinking that they will do it. It’s not just a matter of knowing what we should do, it’s about connecting with why it’s important and ‘what’s in it for me?’
The other part of the book is based on whole systems health — to understand the connection between their physical and emotional health.”
In the Simplicity Forum, White works with people, helping them clear the clutter of life and shift their focus to what’s important, like “feeling in control of your life, having good relationships and good social connections in your community, having meaningful work,” she said. “It’s those types of things that actually make us feel deeply satisfied in our lives.
“A lot of the focus on global warming is energy efficiency. Nobody is really talking about how to change our lifestyles and the kind of infrastructure changes we need in order to support a lifestyle that’s more environmentally sustainable...
...White serves the community by informing them on a grass roots level what they can do as individuals to begin living in harmony with the environment. Through education and music, she keeps the conversation and the emphasis on going green.
- Estes Park Trail Gazette
Date: July 9, 2007
Contact: Kyle Patterson, 970-586-1363
The Eco-Tones, featuring Jimmy Sferes and Jennifer White, will be performing at the Beaver Meadows Visitor Center Auditorium in Rocky Mountain National Park, on Wednesday, July 11, Wednesday, July 18 and Wednesday, August 15. All performances begin at 7:15 p.m. Sferes and White, an acoustic duo, have been featured in Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" and the Hallmark Channel's New Morning TV Show. All donations given during the performances will go to the Next Generation Fund of the Rocky Mountain Nature Association.
The Next Generation Fund promises to expand a host of well-tested educational programs for Rocky Mountain National Park, cultivating the next generation as future stewards of our public lands. It has established a mandate for creativity and innovative programs, including the Junior Ranger program, Rocky Mountain National Park Environmental Education, Rocky Mountain Field Seminars and the American Conservation Corps.
The programs are free and open to the public. For more information about Rocky Mountain National Park or other programs offered please call (970) 586-1206.
- Kyle Patterson, National Park Service
Date: July 1, 2007
The Eco-Tones, Jimmy Sferes and Jennifer White, will perform a set prior to the keynote address by Frances Moore Lappe at Co-op America's Green Festival in Washington, DC. Their performance will take place on Friday, October 5th at 7pm as a part of the "What's the Economy For, Anyways?" Track. - Eco-Tones Press Release
Discography
Sferes and White: Where Do We Go from Here (2008)
Sferes and White: The View from Here (2005)
Photos
Bio
CONCERTS WITH A CONSCIENCE
Have you got a mission to inform your audience about sustainability and make the world a better place?
Do you recognize the inherent power of music to engage and entertain?
Wish the speaker and the artist shared the stage so that people would actually emerge feeling educated, empowered and inspired?
THEN MEET THE ECO-TONES
Eco-Tones combine environmental education and musical entertainment ("edutainment") in a fun, non-judgmental setting where audiences learn the simple steps they can take to live a high quality life that is respectful of each other and the environment. They illuminate the how and why of sustainability with regard to energy use, transportation, food choices, consumption and getting the word out.
Jimmy Sferes and Jennifer White, are a husband and wife team, who have chosen to combine their shared passions for music and the environment into a fun and interactive program that helps people discover what they can do to live a happy and sustainable life. They have played professionally together over the last six years in a wide variety of settings as the acoustic duo Sferes & White, and have been featured on Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion as well as the Hallmark Channel's New Morning TV Show. In 2005 they released their debut CD "The View from Here" and in 2008 they released their next CD "Where Do We Go from Here." Jimmy and Jennifer live a simple but deeply satisfying lifestyle where they make every effort to "walk their talk." Their home, studio and vehicle emissions are all offset with Renewable Energy Credits provided by wind and their "tour bus" is a biodiesel vehicle. Jimmy and Jennifer have both been teachers for over a decade, and take great joy in the opportunity to use their talents to help make the world a better place for everyone.
Jimmy has been a lifelong activist and vegetarian for over 30 years and as a musician has had the opportunity to share the stage with David Wilcox, Delbert McClinton, America and many others. Jennifer is the Executive Director of a national nonprofit called the Simplicity Forum (www.simplicityforum.org) and the Co-Founder and Director of Education for the Green Heart Institute (www.GreenHeartInstitute.org.) Their shows are versatile and range from a short forty-five minute presentation or keynote, to longer two-hour concerts, to day-long in-depth workshops covering a variety of sustainable living topics.
For more complete bios go to their website at:
www.eco-tones.com
To purchase either of their CDs go to:
http://cdbaby.com/found?allsearch=sferes+and+white&submit=search
To watch the Eco-Tones Promo Video on YouTube go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wafLkhoRtMM
Links
