About the project
The Watershed Soundscape grows out of a wider effort across southern Arizona to bring the desert’s rivers back to life. The Santa Cruz once ran year round. After more than a century of groundwater pumping and diversion, its perennial desert flows were lost, and with them a daily, living relationship between the city and its river.
Today hydrologists, ecologists, artists, and neighbors are working to restore that water. Groups like the Watershed Management Group hold a fifty-year vision of free-flowing rivers returning to Tucson and the Santa Cruz Watershed by 2070, guided less by fear than by care. This project joins that work through sound and image, translating tree-ring records, groundwater studies from Cienega Creek, and field recordings and soils gathered at Las Cienegas into something an audience can feel as well as understand.
A watershed, it turns out, is not only a system of water and land. It is a set of relationships between people and the desert they share.
for reed trio, electronics and video projections
created with local soundscape recordings, local soils, and native plant inks
for the Santa Cruz River Watershed, Tucson, Arizona
Images for Resonancia Natural document the behavior of locally gathered earth pigments and plant inks as they move through water. Watershed sound recordings were transformed to create the electronic track. The piece unfolds past, present, and future, referring to times of deeper connection to the land, aggressive disruption, and an ultimate realization of our interconnectedness.
a new audiovisual work for the Santa Cruz River Watershed by Yuanyuan (Kay) He
The pigments
Every color on this page comes from the project’s own materials: inks extracted from plants gathered in the watershed, and soils collected at Las Cienegas National Conservation Area.
The project
The Watershed Soundscape Project is a community-based collaboration between musicians, visual artists, writers, and watershed scientists, co-directed by Jackie Glazier and Sara Fraker.
Sara Fraker, School of Music
Jackie Glazier, School of Music
Larry Fisher, School of Natural Resources and the Environment
Jacelle Ramon-Sauberan, Tohono O’odham Community College
Yuanyuan (Kay) He, School of Music
Neha Gupta, Arizona Institute of Resilience
Carissa DiCindio, School of Art
Alison Hawthorne Deming, Creative Writing
Lisa Shipek, Watershed Management Group
Matthew Williams, School of Music
Alan Nyiri, BLM artist-in-residence
Carolina Heredia, composer
Heather Bird Harris, visual artist
The Tucson Symphony Orchestra
Arizona Symphonic Winds
Canyon del Oro High School Wind Ensemble
Catalina Foothills High School Wind Ensemble
Desert View High School Symphonic Band
Flowing Wells High School Wind Ensemble
Ironwood Ridge High School Wind Ensemble
Marana High School Concert Band
Mountain View High School Wind Ensemble
Mountain View High School Orchestra
Pueblo High School Band
Rincon/University High School Wind Ensemble
Sabino High School Concert Band
Sahuaro High School Concert Band
Salpointe Catholic High School Symphonic Band
Sonora Winds
Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra
Sunnyside High School Concert Band
Tucson High Magnet School Concert Band
Tucson New Horizons Band
Tucson Pops Orchestra
University of Arizona Wind Ensemble
Walden Grove High School Band
Tucson Media Studio, film
Rick Chavez, lighting
Carson Scott, technical design
Wiley Ross, audio engineer
Luc Barbaro & Anne Sourdril, soundscape recordings
Samantha Carrillo, Tucson Soil Survey Office (USDA-NRCS)
The Watershed Management Group
Resonancia Natural project page
Composer podcast episode
Landscapes to Listen To (CNRS)
Made with generous support from the Technology Research Initiative Fund / Water, Environmental, and Energy Solutions Initiative, administered by the University of Arizona Office of Research and Partnerships and the Arizona Institute for Resilience; the University of Arizona School of Music; and the French National Centre for Scientific Research. With gratitude to Las Cienegas National Conservation Area. © 2026 Watershed Soundscape Project.