I though that UK members of this list may be interested in the attached tha=
t
went out on the SOUNDSCAPESUK list.
Chris.
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Hi everyone:
I'm doing a little tour in England to promote the UK release of WHY BIRDS
SING.
Here are the dates and times:
20th - London Jazz Festival, The Spitz
22nd - Oxford Brookes University
24th - Dartington - concert
26th - Peak Festival, Darbyshire. With Colin Tudge.
At Thorndike Hall
28th - London - Royal Institution.
With David Toop, Evan Parker, and Steven Mithen
29th - Norwich - Borders
If anyone is interested in attending any of these events, let me know.
Hope to see some of you!
DR
Why Birds Sing
A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song
David Rothenberg Basic Books, 2005
Penguin UK, 2005
Why Birds Sing is the first introduction to the world of bird song that
combines the insights of science, poetry, and music. The aim is to show
that we need all three human ways of knowing to find the fullest
understanding of these beautiful, natural sounds which resound around us
every spring.
Rothenberg begins with his own experience playing clarinet along with birds
in the National Aviary, and when he finds that the birds seem to respond
much more to his music than he expected, he embarks on a journey from
ancient writings on to the cutting edge of neuroscience, ending deep in the
Australian rainforest where he tries to play along with an Albert?s
lyrebird, using all he has picked up along the way.
It is a fascinating tour, along which you will meet the English poet who
wrote a more accurate transcription of a bird song than any nineteenth
century scientist. You will see how sound recording and computers have
revolutionized our ability to print out bird songs and scrutinize the
sounds on paper. You will find out why one man wrote a two hundred page
book on a three-note bird song.You will meet the one bird that picks up
African bird songs on its migratory route, and sings them plain as day in
the marshes of Europe. You will learn how neuroscience has discovered that
when a canary learns a new song, new neurons appear in his brain. You will
find out who and what mockingbirds mock, and in the after all these tales
you will finally learn that birds sing for the same reason humans do:
because they can, and because they must.
Publication date:
April 2005 in the US; November 2005 in the UK
www.whybirdssing.com
"David Rothenberg is one of the rare musicians who is devoted to exploring
the voices of the natural world. I would hope this book might encourage
others to follow suit."
-Paul Winter, founder of Living Music and
the Paul Winter Consort
"Why Birds Sing is a witty, insightful, intrepid, and delightful meditation
on the limits of science and reason to comprehend not only birdsong but all
of nature's mysteries."
-John Horgan, author of The End of Science and
Rational Mysticism
"This book is exuberant! Exuberantly intellectual, exuberantly alive. And
when you are finished with it the world will seem more alive as well, which
is an awful lot for one book to accomplish."
?Bill McKibben, author of Wandering Home
"Measured in new ideas and speculations per pound, this book leads the
pack."
--Birding Magazine
"Impressive and stimulating: an enticing exploration?"
?Kirkus Reviews
"Rothenberg delves heartily into the lovely and strange structures of bird
songs, and finds enough syllables, rhythms and syncopations to fill a jazz
encyclopedia."
--Publishers Weekly
"We meet many interesting characters in these pages: the birds, of course,
from song sparrow to mockingbird, and the people, from poets John Clare and
Walt Whitman to the composer Olivier Messiaen and many contemporary
researchers in diverse, arcane fields. Readers will not shrug off mere
starling songs again."
--Library Journal
"Why Birds Sing transforms one of those taken-for-granted things into
let's-think-about-it-again stuff."
--The New York Times
"Rothenberg stalks the mystery brilliantly, but in the end it eludes him.
Perhaps, he suggests, that like us, birds sing for joy, simply because they
can."
--Los Angeles Times
"With a musician's ear and a poet's heart, he seeks to describe, more than
decode, the nearly boundless richness of birdsong's beauty."
--Sy Montgomery, Discover
"Rothenberg is a participant in the passerine orchestra, not just an
observer. Benny Goodman, eat your heart out!"
--E Magazine
"Many readers who start Why Birds Sing as skeptics will come away from
Rothenberg's sweeping and personalized survey convinced that birds create
music and enjoy doing so."
--The Weekly Standard
"Rothenberg tackles his question with delight. Ultimately, he is most
concerned with wonder?"
--Anthony Doerr, Boston Globe
"A remarkable book full of information and insight."
--Parabola
"Rothenberg is to be commended for bringing all the tools of human inquiry
to his question."
--The Oregonian
"You will never hear birds the same way again."
--Claudia Marshall, WFUV Radio
"An intimate look at the most lovely of natural phenomena, with surprising
insights about the origin of music."
--Bird Times
"An exuberant book, rich with a love for bird songs and full of the mystery
they evoke in the human spirit."
--Orion
"There's plenty of science in this lyrical book, along with an open sense
of wonder."
--Bostonia
"His trained mind loves the clarity and order that science seeks, but
Rothenberg also delights in the chaotic and the inexplicable. He is a
science/art amphibian."
--Simon Barnes, New Scientist
"Never before have I read anything, fiction or non-fiction, that so
elegantly unites science and art to delve deeper into the mystery of life."
--The Evening Sun
Philosopher and musician David Rothenberg is the author of Sudden Music:
Improvisation, Art, Nature (Georgia, 2002), Blue Cliff Record: Zen Echoes
(Codhill Press, 2001), Hand?s End: Technology and the Limits of Nature
(California, 1993), and Always the Mountains (Georgia, 2003). His articles
have appeared in Parabola, Orion, The Nation, Wired, Dwell, Kyoto Journal,
and Sierra. Rothenberg is also a composer and jazz clarinetist, and he has
six CDs out under his own name. His second record, On the Cliffs of the
Heart, with percussionist Glen Velez and banjo player Graeme Boone, was
named it one of the top ten releases of 1995 by Jazziz magazine. In 2000
Before the War was released, a collaboration with natural sound artist
Douglas Quin. The Guardian in Britain praised it as "genuine 21st century
music." Rothenberg is professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey
Institute of Technology.
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