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"Why do birds sing? Could we call what they sing and how they sing music? Of all nonhuman animals, birds teach us to check anthropocentrism in music, or, as David Rothenberg puts it in Why Birds Sing (2005), birds check "the conceit that humanity is needed to find beauty in the natural world." But how do they learn songs? Do they invent and compose them or "parrot" what they hear? Join us for a discussion between animal behavioral psychologist Professor Ofer Tchernichovski (Hunter College) and distinguished professor of philosophy and music, composer and clarinetist, Professor David Rothenberg (NJIT). Visit our site for more event information: "

"a temporary installation selected for the 2019 LA Design Festival, invokes the 'Purpose of Joy', as a reframed response to the festival theme, 'Design with Purpose'. It brings the activity of uninhibited singing from the privacy of one's shower to a public street parking lot, in a dedicated urban, mini 'singing shower park'. In play and joy, vulnerable boundaries between private and public behaviors dissolve. Using an 'authorized' play setting for all ages, it explores where and how we feel comfortable to express joy, where we hide, and where we test our private face in public."

"As someone who recently started a choir, even though I am terrified of singing, and as someone who leads teams, this article really spoke to me."

"Rosetta's Plasma Consortium (RPC) has uncovered a mysterious 'song' that Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is singing into space. RPC principal investigator Karl-Heinz Glaßmeier, head of Space Physics and Space Sensorics at the Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany, tells us more."

"It's a sonic phenomenon that occurs in only certain pockets of desert around the world. The sound of sand grains shuffling down hot slopes that can recall the angry buzz of bees or the deep, groaning thrums of a didgeridoo group. Scientists refer to these shifting dunes as "singing" or "booming" sands, which for centuries mystified explorers from Charles Darwin to Marco Polo. We know now that these strange sounds are caused by the vibrations of grains avalanching, at relatively slow speeds, down dunes, and that the grain size and speed influence the notes of these curious hums of nature."

"I first encountered Guidonian hands as an extension of my interest in graphic scores from the 20th century avant-garde. Beyond their shared use of drawing, and inherent beauty, the two have few conceptual links. Guidonian hands were a medieval mnemonic device (a system of learning aiding retention) designed to assist singers sight-sing (the sung realization of prima vista, or sight-reading). Their development is generally credited to an 11th centruy Italian music theorist named Guido of Arezzo, though the graphic use of the hand as a musical guide long predates the development of his technique. Within a Guidonian hand, each section of the hand indicated a specific note within the hexachord system (six-notes), over three octaves. In the absence of a score, once the graphic hand was memorized by a singer, a conductor would need only point to a series of notes on their hand. They are a fascinating fragment from the development of Western theory, as well as being objects of sublime beauty."

"VoxAura; the River Sings suggests that we pay attention to these complex issues that ultimately control our destiny by listening to the chemical composition of the Baltic."

"The ocean might seem like a quiet place, but listen carefully and you might just hear the sounds of the fish choir. Most of this underwater music comes from soloist fish, repeating the same calls over and over. But when the calls of different fish overlap, they form a chorus."

"Trained as a musical composer, Beer (who created a 'Vessel Orchestra' for his 2019 solo show at the Met Breuer) works with the acoustic fingerprints of architecture, asking vocalists to stimulate their natural harmonics. 'Since I was a kid, I could hear the notes of buildings,' he says, explaining that a room is like a seashell, constantly making its own sounds.  When he found himself on the wrong side of the Sydney Opera House, he led his four local singers to an external nook of the building, then asked them to lock lips and treat each other's bodies as architecture. 'The acoustic space that they're working with is the empty mouth of the other person that they're singing through.'"

Dr. Bernie Krause, creator of Wild Sanctuary, demonstrates that every living organism produces sound. This presentation focuses on the symbiotic ways in which the sounds of one organism affect and interrelate with other organisms, local and regional, within a given habitat. Learn about unusual soundscapes and their relevance to preserving natural sounds worldwide. Biophony--the notion that all sounds in undisturbed natural habitats fit into unique niches--will be used to illustrate the ways in which animals taught humans to dance and sing.

"THE WORLD IS buzzing with activity that's invisible to us. Take slime mold. The fungus, also known as Physarum polycephalum, can be found hiding in dark, dank places like a pile of damp leaves or the belly of a log. Though it's not invisible-the mold has a mossy yellow color-to the naked eye and ear, it doesn't appear to move or make a sound. Of course that's not true. Slime mold is a living, ever-shifting organism."

"An installation at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden ponders the sounds made by plants. Visitors to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden can hear a version of the songs these corn plants have to sing. Credit Marcos Brindicci/Reuters Image"

"Winds blowing across snow dunes on Antarctica's Ross Ice Shelf cause the massive ice slab's surface to vibrate, producing a near-constant drumroll of seismic tones. Video: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego."

"Keeners were the women of rural Ireland who were traditionally paid to cry, wail and sing over the bodies of the dead at funerals and wakes. Their role was to help channel the grief of the bereaved and they had an elevated, almost mythical status among their communities. The custom of keening had all but vanished by the 1950's as people began to view it as primitive, old-fashioned and uncivilised."

"Silenced voices of disappeared dissidents and migrant slaves. Melodies lost to the violence of empire. Vanished monuments marking anti-colonial choruses. Hidden, transgressive dances of migrant domestic workers. Inaudible and obscured, these sounds and movements haunt Hong-Kai Wang's work. Rather than erecting monuments to these pasts, Wang uses listening, sounding, and singing as conduits to these lost or absent acts across temporal and geopolitical distances. This practice, situated around sound both real and imagined, might be described as anti-monumental."

"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, goes the Duke Ellington song. By that logic, some bird songs really do mean something: at least a few bird species can swing in the same way that human musicians do, New Scientist can reveal. This claim has been made based on a mathematical analysis of the songs of one species, the thrush nightingale. Not all of the musicians New Scientist spoke to agree that what the thrush nightingale is doing can be called swing - but several said they have heard other species of birds singing that definitely do swing. "

"Ever wonder why your voice sounds so much better when you sing in the shower? It has to do with an acoustic "blur" called reverberation. From classical to pop music, reverberation "makes music sound nicer," acoustic engineer Trevor Cox tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. It helps blend the sound, "but you don't want too much," he warns."

"Artist Julianne Swartz presents a sound installation, Digital Empathy, which greets High Line visitors with a variety of messages. At some sites, computer-generated voices speak messages of concern, support, and love, intermingled with pragmatic information. In other sites, those same digitized voices recite poetry and sing love songs to park visitors."

"For the first time, researchers have found a nonhuman animal that seems to have a sense of the beat."

"New research proves that wild Savannah Sparrows can learn to sing different melodies at two ages, shedding light on critical learning periods for songbirds. Previously only seen in laboratory settings, this is the first experimental study to show the behavior in wild subjects. "