- David Rothenberg
-
For the child burn victim, see David_(1988_film).File:DR and Starling lowerrez.jpgInterspecies musician David Rothenberg with a starling.
David Rothenberg is a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with a special interest in animal sounds as music. He is also a jazz musician whose books and CDs reflect a longtime interest in understanding other species by making music with them.
Contents
Early life and career
Looking back at his high school years in the 1970s, Rothenberg told Claudia Dreifus of the New York Times, "I was influenced by saxophonist Paul Winter's Common Ground album, which had his own compositions with whale and bird sounds mixed in. That got me interested in using music to learn more about the natural world."[1]
As an undergraduate at Harvard, Rothenberg created his own major to combine music with communication. He traveled in Europe after graduation, playing jazz clarinet. Listening to the recorded song of a hermit thrush, he heard structure that reminded him of a Miles Davis solo.[2]
"Interspecies musician"
File:DR in Zodiac.jpgDavid Rothenberg making music with iceberg in background.Because of Rothenberg's study of animal song and his experimental interactions with animal music, he is often called an "interspecies musician."[2] According to Andrew Revkin, Rothenberg "explores the sounds of all manner of living things as both an environmental philosopher and jazz musician."[3]
Rothenberg's book Why Birds Sing: A Journey Into the Mystery of Bird Song (Basic Books, 2005) was inspired by an impromptu duet in March 2000 with a laughingthrush at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh.[1] In the wild, male and female laughingthrushes sing complex duets, so "jamming" with a human clarinet player was closely related to the bird's natural behavior.[2] A CD accompanying the book also featured Rothenberg's duet with an Australian lyrebird.[1] The book served as the basis for a 2006 BBC documentary of the same name.[4]
Rothenberg's book Thousand Mile Song (Basic Books, 2008) reflects similar curiosity about whale sounds considered as music. He seeks out both scientific and artistic insights into the phenomenon. Philip Hoare said of the book, "..while Rothenberg's madcap mission to play jazz to the whales seems as crazy as Captain Ahab's demented hunt for the great White Whale, it is sometimes such obsessions that reveal inner truths...I find myself more than a little sympathetic to the author's faintly bonkers but undoubtedly stimulating intent: to push at the barriers between human history and natural history."[5]
He is currently at work on a book about insects and music, to be published by St Martins Press in 2013, a project he began at the 2006 International Arts Pestival in London.[4] During the 2011 emergence of Brood XIX periodical cicadas, Rothenberg was the subject of a YouTube video as he played saxophone to accompany the mating calls of Magicicada tredecassini.[3][6]
References
- ^ a b c Dreifus, Claudia (20 September 2005). "A conversation with David Rothenberg; Ode With a Nightingale, and a Thrush, and a Lyrebird". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E0DE1630F933A1575AC0A9639C8B63&pagewanted=all. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
- ^ a b c Reich, Ronni (15 October 2010). "NJIT professor finds nothing cuckoo in serenading our feathered friends". Star Ledger. http://www.nj.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2010/10/njit_professor_finds_nothing_c.html. Retrieved 19 June 2011.
- ^ a b Revkin, Andrew (17 June 2011). "Sax and Cicadas – An Interspecies Jam". New York Times. http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/17/sax-and-cicadas-an-interspecies-jam/. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ a b "Invertebrate Sound and Vibration 13th International Meeting". University of Missouri. p. xiii. http://isv2011.missouri.edu/Program_files/Proc_web.pdf. Retrieved 18 June 2011.
- ^ Hoare, Philip (25 July 2008). "Whale music in a sea of sound". The Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/non_fictionreviews/3555453/Whale-music-in-a-sea-of-sound.html. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
- ^ Rothenberg, David. "Bug Music". Terrain.org. http://blog.terrain.org/2011/06/09/bug-music/. Retrieved 20 June 2011.
External links
Categories:- Living people
- American jazz clarinetists
- New Jersey Institute of Technology faculty
- Harvard University alumni
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
