David Rothenberg - music in the natural world
Musician, author, philosopher, David Rothenberg teaches at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is a composer and improvising clarinetist interested in collaboration with other musicians, both human and animals.
Rothenberg's books include Why Birds Sing: A Journey into the Mystery of Bird Song (Basic Books, 2005), as well as Thousand Mile Song (Basic Books, 2008) Philip Hoare commented about this 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."
He also authored Survival of the Beautiful: Art, Science and Evolution (Bloomsbury Press, 2011) “David Rothenberg is a brilliantly fun guide on a journey … just about the best travel literature of the mind out there.
