Jam with lake creatures at two ‘interspecies’ concerts this weekend

An aquatic musical adventure is taking place in Philadelphia this Sunday Bowerbird and LandHealth Institute have teamed up to present two outdoor performances featuring interspecies musician David Rothenberg If that title throws you off don t worry we re here to explain Tossing underwater microphones known as hydrophones into lakes and ponds distinguishes Rothenberg s performances where he puts on an improvisational musical duet with any and all sounds that emerge from the deep The settings for two performances include Edgewood Lake in FDR Park and Centennial Lake in West Fairmount Park Rothenberg is a trained jazz musician a naturalist philosopher and a prolific composer and writer who s written over a dozen books and recorded forty albums He explained each of his duets holds a surprise You re dealing with nature you never know what s going to happen you re going to plug that microphone into a speaker and you re going to hear all these crazy sounds going on in the pond Rothenberg explained Those crazy sounds can come from plants moving and releasing oxygen as a conclusion of photosynthesis or various aquatic insects like water boatmen and backswimmers rubbing their bodies together Turtles or fish swimming through the water also generate their own music revealed Rothenberg However he noted it s hard to pinpoint the sounds origins We only know of the sound in an average pond which seems crazy to me he explained Why don t we know what s going on People haven t bothered to listen Various rhythms that nature offers are considered musical like rustling leaves birdsongs cicada chirps or babbling brooks Unlike majority of western music the beats are unpredictable I m one of these people who believe that these animals have more gripping rhythms than humans he announced Humans like these steady beats But nature has more irregular rhythms very strange rhythms and you can learn to dance to those Bowerbird is a small experimental arts presenter The LandHealth Institute is a non-profit whose mission is to reconnect Philadelphians to nature The two organizations indeed came together by accident I had no prior relationship with the LandHealth Institute noted Pete Angevine a local musician who works with Bowerbird and helped organize the concerts I reached out to David Rothenberg back in the fall Angevine commented LandHealth had reached out to him the same week with basically the same requests So he kind of put us together because we both had the independent idea to invite him to Philadelphia Rothenberg plays flutes from various parts of the world and the clarinet which surely would be welcomed by a certain pretentious and jaded cartoon squid He also uses equipment to sample and remix the sounds as they come through the microphone The effect is a hodgepodge of genres like electronic music jazz and even ASMR The stuff that David s playing it s rare it s different but it s not alienating Angevine reported It s not harsh or challenging or laborious to listen to These sounds make you tingle all over Rothenberg mentioned You can t quite place them but they kind of surprise you Exploring musical ecosystems And for all the skeptics Rothenberg insists that the noises that come from the pond are indeed music Music is what you decide to consider as music he disclosed There s no good definition for music other than that You know a lot of music sounds somebody considers it musical someone else calls it pure raw noise Surely you ve had that experience growing up liking specific music your parents didn t like Princeton University professors Gavin Steingo and Asif Ghazanfar have created an entire project The Animals Song Collective to further explore this idea whether animal songs should be considered music The two have worked with and organized concerts with Rothenberg in the past When we say you know the bird is caroling is that just because it sounds musical to us and how our brain was shaped by human music questioned Ghazanfar who teaches neuroscience and psychology Is it a creative act for the bird that it has an appreciation for Steingo and Ghazanfar are interested in learning more about how music originated how different cultures interpret it and what that can tell us about the sounds animals are making The world is filled with forms of synchronization forms of rhythmicity or periodicity or regularity patterns declared Steingo who teaches music I think these are things that David Rothenberg is very attuned to To Steingo Rothenberg s music is not necessarily about personal expressional I think David Rothenberg has reliably been interested in music as something that doesn t belong to an individual but sort of patterns and forms in the world that you can tap into and ride as a wave he explained So it s a different way of thinking about music but I think it s valid to think of music that way And the jam session is not just for people Rothenberg explained that the underwater creatures will also be grooving to the music in their own way To prove they are also listening he s conducted multiple experiments I even did this experiment like times in the winter when there s no sound he explained You punch a hole in the ice stick the microphone in the ice and above the ground you play the sound of one of these insects And almost all the time we heard it back like they were waking up in winter and making sounds I couldn t believe it was happening In order to really understand what Rothenberg s music is all about people will have to come and hear it for themselves The pond music session is not just a way to get outdoors it s an opportunity to connect with the different species living among us but are easy to ignore After all humans are not the only ones taking part in Philly s ecosystem The concerts Secret Sounds of the Ponds will take place on Sunday April at Edgewood Lake in FDR Park at a m and Centennial Lake in West Fairmount Park at p m According to Bowerbird the morning session will be family friendly while the latter session is aimed for the more contemplative crowd The post Jam with lake creatures at two interspecies concerts this weekend appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY