Polar Bear Country
Sustain Music & Nature, a national nonprofit that makes music a force for nature, collaborated with Alaska’s US Fish &. Wildlife Service to create Refuge Alaska, an 11 minute film featuring stunning videography set to evocative music composed by four U.S. based independent artists: Sam Kassirer (Josh Ritter and the Royal City Band, Board Member - Sustain Music & Nature), Akie Bermiss (Lake Street Dive), Matt Douglas (The Mountain Goats), and Derry deBorja (Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit).
Unable to travel or gather during the height of the pandemic, the composer-musicians met across time and space to virtually connect with northern places most had never visited in person. An assemblage of video captured in previous years by multiple videographers became the inspiration for an artwork of music and film. Four chapters take the audience through the air over vast landscapes, across the land with close floral and faunal encounters, beneath the water with fish and marine mammals, and finally into the winged world of birds.
Alaska’s 16 National Wildlife Refuges span from the edges of the high Arctic to the outer islands of the Aleutians, and provide some of the best places in the world for wildlife and people to thrive. These are the homelands of Alaska Native peoples from time immemorial, and we honor their centuries of stewardship and deep connections with these lands
Country of Origin: United States
SAM KASSIRER, Director
Unable to travel or gather during the height of the pandemic, the composer-musicians met across time and space to virtually connect with northern places most had never visited in person. An assemblage of video captured in previous years by multiple videographers became the inspiration for an artwork of music and film. Four chapters take the audience through the air over vast landscapes, across the land with close floral and faunal encounters, beneath the water with fish and marine mammals, and finally into the winged world of birds.
Alaska’s 16 National Wildlife Refuges span from the edges of the high Arctic to the outer islands of the Aleutians, and provide some of the best places in the world for wildlife and people to thrive. These are the homelands of Alaska Native peoples from time immemorial, and we honor their centuries of stewardship and deep connections with these lands
Country of Origin: United States
SAM KASSIRER, Director
Sam Kassirer is a Boston based record producer, composer, and touring musician who has produced critically-acclaimed albums for artists like Josh Ritter, Lake Street Dive, Langhorne Slim, and David Wax Museum. He is the founder and creative head of Great North Sound Society, a retreat-style recording studio he built in an old farmhouse in Maine.
As a composer, Sam recently scored the documentary film In the Game (Kartemquin films). He has also remained a member of Josh Ritter’s touring band for the past 12 years, performing on The Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.