Nightingales in Berlin: Liner Notes
The new album Nightingales in Berlin released along with this book is composed of live recordings made in 2016, 2017, and 2018 in Berlin and Finland. These tracks listed below can be found in download and streaming form at the usual online sources. A double CD entitled Nightingale Cities will also soon be available, including tracks from both Berlin and Helsinki that are not to be found online.
1. The Boori Sound (3:35)
Viktoriapark, Kreuzberg, Berlin, May 5, 2017
Lembe Lokk, voice
Sanna Salmenkallio, violin
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Nightingale
There it is, that sexiest sound, barely there, at 0:33 and 1:52, heard over the recurring minimalist cycle of human voices and instruments grounding the song of the nightingale, which precedes all human music. This piece epitomizes what is special about this edition of interspecies music-making—it is a group process, not just me alone with the birds, but more of us. The ensemble grows.
2. Dreaming Slow (7:32)
Volkspark Hasenheide, April 28, 2016
Lembe Lokk, voice
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Nightingale
Lembe’s beautiful song leaves space for the bird’s interjections—friend or foe, fact or dream. It really happened, just like this.
3. While Birds Chant Praises (2:38)
Landwehr Canal, Kreuzberg, May 10, 2017
Cymin Samawatie, voice
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Lembe Lokk, voice
Nightingale
Cymin sings her own words:
Today I give my sorrow free rein
Drench my pain with your deep tones
Dearest Kim, please don’t stop, please don’t stop.
I want to open all my wounds
And let the tears flow
In this moment setting wisdom aside.
4. You’ve Ruined This Bird For Us (4:08)
Volkspark Hasenheide, April 23, 2016
Korhan Erel, iPad
Nightingale
You heard it here. Korhan Erel messes with a nightingale by sampling his own song using an app called Samplr and remixing it back to the singing bird. Does this ruin our singer for science? Spend a few years out there listening and only then shall you know.
5. The Nightingales Are Drunk (8:09)
Landwehr Canal, Kreuzberg, May 9, 2017
Lembe Lokk, voice
Korhan Erel, iPad
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Nightingale
The famous words of Hafez inspire the sound of the night.
6. Sharawaji Blues (4:48)
Tuulisaaren Park, Helsinki, May 30, 2016
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Thrush nightingale
In Helsinki the nightingales must contend with a night that never gets dark. They don’t love this, because they can easily be seen. So they just keep moving. This, the final night of our northern interspecies musicking, was the moment I was most fed up with the whole enterprise. And it’s my favorite duet of the season.
7. Willow Wind (3:27)
Tuulisaaren Park, Helsinki, May 28, 2016
David Rothenberg, seljefløyte
Thrush nightingale
Here I play the ancient Norwegian overtone willow flute called the seljefløyte,which plays only the pitches of the natural harmonic series. Does the bird get this?
8. No One Sings at Dawn Alone (6:55)
Tuulisaaren Park, Helsinki, May 28, 2016
David Rothenberg, bass clarinet
Thrush nightingale, blackbirds
Approaching dawn, which in Finland in May is truly the middle of the night, the nightingale sounds above the growing chorus of blackbirds and the low thrum of the bass clarinet.
9. The Morning Electric (3:23)
Tuulisaaren Park, Helsinki, May 30, 2016
David Rothenberg, iPad
Thrush nightingale, corn crake, sedge warblers
Dawn brings the machine. Our bird deals with textures, not notes, and his fellow singers find their place in the mix as well.
10. Sisichak (4:19)
Mäntyharju, Finland, May 28, 2016
David Rothenberg, furulya
Blyth’s reed warblers
By chance at dawn in central Finland we stumble into a jam session of Blyth’s reed warblers, the most musical of European warblers, a bird that Geoff Sample says could be renamed the sisichak, because that is somehow what it sounds like. They riff and play together with sound, seemingly neither defending territories nor trying to impress the girls. I join in on a Bulgarian double whistle called furulya.
11. Alien Beauty (5:42)
Tuulisaaren Park, Helsinki, May 30, 2016
David Rothenberg, iPad, clarinet
Thrush nightingale, sedge warblers
Later that last Helsinki morning, a more precise electrified sound emerges in the midst of nature—does it make even a drum beat of sense?
12. She’s Finally Here (3:59)
Volkspark Humboldthain, Berlin, May 9, 2018
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Benedicte Maurseth, Hardanger fiddle
Nightingale
We finally here the short, attenuated phrases of a male nightingale which happen only once a female has arrived. All that singing finally gets him somewhere…
13. I Cannot Go Home (3:59)
Floraplatz, Tiergarten, Berlin, May 7, 2018
David Rothenberg, half-clarinet
Wassim Mukdad, oud
Volker Lankow, frame drum
Ines Theileis, voice
Nightingale
Our bird can sing over a beat. Does he hear the pull of regulated time, or is it all just noise in his way? “So easy for this bird to travel thousands of miles,” muses Wassim. “I had to cross so many borders to get here, and should I return home to Syria, I would probably be killed. In my homeland I was a doctor, and an activist against the war. Here in Berlin I am a musician. Sometimes life goes that way.”
14. Exit Music (4:04)
Viktoriapark, Kreuzberg, Berlin, May 5, 2017
Lembe Lokk, voice
Sanna Salmenkallio, violin
David Rothenberg, clarinet
Police, closing us down
Nightingale
All right, the final piece, nearly 1:00 A.M., when the neighborhood has had enough. Reminds me of the end of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when the cops show up and haul everyone away.
15. Nightingale, You Are the One (6:56)
Viktoriapark, Kreuzberg, Berlin, May 5, 2017
Finally our bird can sing for himself, alone, no humans to trouble him. The wild will win in the end.
Total time, 75:00
Recorded live by David Rothenberg, Ville Tanttu, and Reelika Ramot
Mixed and mastered by David Rothenberg
All photos above by Ville Tanttu, stills from his film Nightingales in Berlin
All titles published © 2019 Mysterious Mountain Music (BMI)
All rights reserved.