The MOTH PROJECT is a new 75 minute live show featuring GRAMMY nominated producer Peter Kiesewalter and Whitney La Grange on violin, performing a diverse range of music – from Bach to Joni Mitchell to KISS to original songs – with stunning photography by Jim Des Rivières, video, and motion graphics. It is about and inspired by moths with a spoken word narrative arc about one family’s migration from Europe to Canada.Interpretive Naturalist, Tobi Kiesewalter, will present a 30-minute talk on the beauty and diversity of moths. His talk features mostly his own photographs of live moths from eastern Ontario.

MUSIC - From Bach to Joni Mitchell to KISS to original songs, the music reflects the incredible diversity of the moth species and explores the common themes between us and them - migration, seduction, death, transformation, hope. 

PICTURES – Through a visually stunning tour of macro photography, slow motion video, and dynamic motion graphics, moths appear larger than life, towering over two musicians and engulfing them in their world. 

WORDS - By weaving science, Western and Indigenous mythologies, and personal story of one family’s journey from post-war Europe to North America, THE MOTH PROJECT explores the multiple ways we connect to our ecosystem. 

PETER KIESEWALTER studied clarinet and saxophone performance at Ottawa University. He moved to New York City in 1997 and has worked as a touring/recording musician, composer, arranger, Music Director, and producer ever since, most notably with his East Village Opera Company project which signed to Decca/Universal in 2005, garnered much acclaim (“highbrow and brilliant” – New York Magazine Approval Matrix) and a GRAMMY nomination for their modernist take on classic Opera repertoire.  
 
WHITNEY LA GRANGE is from McAllen, TX. She received her Bachelor of Music from The Juilliard School. . In NYC, she has enjoyed the variety of playing in orchestras (New York City Ballet, New York City Opera, Brooklyn Philharmonic, American Symphony Orchestra), on Broadway (upcoming production of Camelot at Lincoln Center), chamber music (Blue Door String Quartet, Lautreamont String Quartet), and rock/pop gigs (Billy Joel, Jon Batiste, Janelle Monae, Darlene Love, Brian Wilson, Graham Nash, Josh Groban, Rod Stewart, Smokey Robinson, and an upcoming tour with Natalie Merchant).  

Tobi Kiesewalter attended high school next to the NAC at Lisgar Collegiate Institute. He received his Honours, B.Sc. in Environmental Science a little further up the Rideau Canal at Carleton University. He then continued paddling upstream, through another 10 lockstations, to the shore of Big Rideau Lake, working over 20 years as an Interpreter and Chief Park Naturalist at Murphys Point Provincial Park. In his current day job he is the provincial coordinator of the Ontario Parks Discovery Program. He is a Certified Interpretive Guide, Interpretive Trainer and Interpretive Planner. His love of nature started early with a wildflower field guide and an Evening Primrose in bloom at the family cottage in Lanark County (‘wow, a flower that blooms in the dark…'). Almost 40 years later, he grows Evening Primrose in his Stittsville garden in an attempt to lure night-time pollinators like the Primrose Moth. He stays up way too late.