The Nature of Music 20: Eleven Paths to Animal Music, David Rothenburg

How does one play music with animals in a way that respects their nature and agency? Other Minds welcomes musician and philosopher David Rothenberg to answer this question in the West Coast premiere of his work Eleven Paths to Animal Music (2025) at the Goldman Theater, David Brower Center. Based on one section of his 2019 book Nightingales in Berlin, David Rothenberg’s Eleven Paths to Animal Music, is a composition that contains vignettes of natural environments recorded on his travels—from frogs in the Amazon, nightingales and wind in the Camargue, leafcutter ants in Costa Rica, and a lake in Brandenburg, among others. This piece encourages performers to listen closely to whole natural environments and find a way to play together and within them. In addition to the inspiration he takes from the natural world, Rothenberg also cites Olivier Messiaen’s Quartet for the End of Time, George Crumb’s Vox Balaenae and Tierra Whack’s Whack World. The remainder of the event will contain shorter pieces where Rothenberg plays with whales and insects, along with a discussion of how and why he embarked on this more-than-human musical quest. This concert is the 20th edition of Other Minds’s Nature of Music series, made possible through generous support from the EarthWays Foundation.