NSS Home Page  Nature Sounds Newsletter Winter 1994 Music with Birds, Frogs and Other Creatures
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The Oakland Museum Concert: Music with Birds, Frogs and Other Creatures
A fascinating blend of natural, electronic, concrete, sampled and processed sounds will be featured in a special concert, "Music with Birds, Frogs and Other Creatures," to be held at 2 pm Saturday, June 25, in the Oakland Museum's James Moore Theatre. The concert, which includes the innovative work of composers Douglas Quin and Barton and Priscilla McLean, is sponsored by the Nature Sounds Society, the California Library of Natural Sounds and the museum's Natural Science Dept. Tickets for "Music with Birds, Frogs and Other Creatures" are $6 general, $4 for Oakland Museum and Nature Sounds Society members, students and seniors. Children under 12 will be admitted free. Douglas Quin combines synthesized and digitally processed human and animal voices with natural sounds to create sonorous, multilayered works in which his exquisite musical compositions parallel the chirps and songs of birds and other animals. The concert will feature his Aurora Song, 1994, a tribute to the "dawn chorus" of bird songs; the contemplative Yasahii Kaze (Gentle Wind), 1993, a suite of five short works for clarinet and ambient sound, based loosely on the structure of Japanese Haiku; and Kingdoms and Phyla, Part 5, 1991, sampled and processed sounds of birds, amphibians and mammals recorded in Kenya, Madagascar and the Brazilian Amazon. Composers Barton and Priscilla McLean, known as the McLean Mix, combine nature sounds with experimental acoustic and electronic instruments in dense, lively compositions that surprise the listener with assorted whistles, thumps, horns and other sounds that bite. Their popular composition, "Rainforest," an interactive sound installation, will be featured in the concert. A stunning recreation of the sounds and sights of the Peruvian Amazon "Rainforest" invites members of the audience to add their own voices and improvisations at a series of user-friendly stations equipped with electronic keyboards, microphones and other instruments. For more information about "Music with Birds, Frogs and Other Creatures", call the California Library of Natural Sounds at the Oakland Museum, 238-7482. For directions to the museum by car, call museum security, 238-3948. The California Library of Natural Sounds, a program of The Oakland Museum's Natural Sciences Department, is a comprehensive regional library of species and environmental sounds available to the public for creative projects by appointment. The Library is in The Oakland Museum, located at Oak and 10th Streets in downtown Oakland, one block from the Lake Merritt BART station and five blocks from Highway 880. Museum hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 10am to 5 pm, and Sunday, noon to 7pm. Suggested donation is $4 general, $2 seniors and students, and free to Oakland Museum members and children six and under. |
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Articles from Winter 1994
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