David Rothenberg

Travelling from Russia to Hawaii to Canada, the improvising composer, jazz musician and philosopher David Rothenberg makes music together with beluga, orca, sperm and humpback whales.

These interspecies improvisations, involving responses between Rothenberg on clarinet and the whales, are extending the boundaries of what can be considered music.

Rothenberg will tour Britain with concerts and lectures in July, to coincide with the UK publication of his Thousand Mile Song: Whale Music in a Sea of Sound, by Basic Books on 3 July. Tour dates are:

22 July: Voices of the World Festival
Royal Opera House, Linbury Studio, London
24 July: Royal Institution lecture, London
26 July: Oxford Botanic Gardens, Oxford
4 - 6 September: Oxford Botanic Gardens Magic Hour Festival, Oxford

Tracks from the accompanying CD can be heard online: www.thousandmilesong.com and cd.baby.com

Essays by Rothenberg and chapters from Thousand Mile Song are on:
Rothenberg's blog
Orion Magazine online, with a video by Gari Saarmaki
www.interspecies.com

orca whale on Vancouver Island

'The whale sounds amazingly close. Right under the boat. The hull itself is buzzing. How is it possible that no one noticed this level of sound before the 1960s? I play along for thirty minutes or so, and the whale never stops.

Two minutes in, he really seems to get louder in response to the spaces I leave in between my notes. He’s alternating with me, not interrupting, like nightingales who compare each other’s riffs in the dark.

Then I play a high wail, and he seems to add a whoop to his bruup. He’s adding resonance to his tones, making them richer, louder. Suddenly he leaps from a real low growl to a super high squeak.

We pause only to back away from the possible sounds that still remain. Then we stop paying attention to one another, back in our separate worlds. Neither human nor whale has forgotten the song we made together, just off the coast of the most isolated islands in the world.'

www.thousandmilesong.com
www.davidrothenberg.net

See David Rothenberg's essay, You make my heart sing, on playing music with birds here on Features.