David Rothenberg makes music live with the sounds of nature, records music with other species, and writes books and makes films about the process. His books and recordings in the field of interspecies music include Why Birds Sing on birds, Thousand Mile Song on whales, and Bug Music on insects. These works have been translated into many foreign languages and have been the subject of documentary films and radio programs in many countries, including Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, the UK, and the United States, including the BBC feature-length TV program Why Birds Sing.
Rothenberg has also written Sudden Music, Blue Cliff Record, Hand’s End, and Survival of the Beautiful. As a musician Rothenberg has performed and recorded with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, Suzanne Vega, Scanner, Elliot Sharp, Iva Bittová, and the Karnataka College of Percussion. His CD, One Dark Night I Left My Silent House, a duet with pianist Marilyn Crispell, came out on ECM in 2010.
Rothenberg is distinguished professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has also collaborated with neuroscientists on a series of projects trying to bring musical understanding to scientific methods of understanding animal sounds, and he is working on new ways to visualize animal music as he continues to bring an ever larger assortment of international collaborators together to interact with the sounds of other species.
comic by Christine Kriegerowski
