Other Minds Presents David Rothenburg: The Nature of Music 20
OTHER MINDS PRESENTS:
The Nature of Music 20
Performance and Lecture at David Brower Center, Berkeley, CA
DAVID ROTHENBERG
Eleven Paths to Animal Music
THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2026 AT 7:30 PM
SAN FRANCISCO—February 26, 2026—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.
Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg is the author of Why Birds Sing, also published in Italy, Spain, Taiwan, China, Korea, and Germany. In 2006 it was turned into a feature-length TV documentary by the BBC. Rothenberg has also written Sudden Music, Blue Cliff Record, Hand’s End, and Always the Mountains. His writings have appeared in at least eleven languages. His book Whale Music, about making music with whales, came out in February 2023, Secret Sounds of Ponds in 2024.
As a musician Rothenberg has performed and recorded with Jan Bang, Scanner, Glen Velez, Suzanne Vega, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, Pauline Oliveros, Benedicte Maurseth, and the Karnataka College of Percussion. His album, One Dark Night I Left My Silent House, a duet with pianist Marilyn Crispell, came out on ECM in 2010. Bug Music, came out 2013, along with a CD of the same name featuring music made out of encounters with the entomological world. His book, CD, film Nightingales in Berlin, was published in 2019. It is also available in German and appeared in French in 2024, where it has been a bestseller. The German audiobook version is read by the acclaimed actress Eva Mattes.
His album with Maori musician Rob Thorne Faultlines came out in 2021. His latest albums include Just Leave It All Behind and Lost Steps. Rothenberg has been profiled on Radiolab and in the New Yorker. He has more than forty albums out under his own name. In 2024 he received a Grammy Award for For the Birds. In 2024, he starred in the film Eastern Anthemsby acclaimed Montreal director Matthew Wolkow. Recent live performances have include the Philharmonie de Paris, Philharmonie Berlin, House of World Cultures Berlin, Biotopia Senses Festival Munich, BirdLife Slovenia Ljubljana, and a sound installation in 2023 at the Venice Architecture Biennale at the Palazzo Bembo. Earlier museum installations have included the Science Gallery Detroit and the Museum of Natural History in Bergen, Norway.
Working together with a team of scientists Rothenberg has contributed to the detailed decoding of the mockingbird’s song. As an interpreter of science he has written feature multimedia stories on cicada music for the New York Times and whale music for National Geographic, while actively exploring new genres of music from around the world and seeking ever more far-flung musical and scientific collaborators.
Rothenberg is distinguished professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
The Nature of Music series, initiated by Other Minds in 2016, is one of the few homes for composers devoted to calling attention to the planet’s endless variety of natural sounds and those made by homo sapiens. As we reach our twentieth event, here’s a look back at our previous participants:
1. 2016 – Cheryl Leonard
2. 2016 – Raven Chacon
3. 2016 – Alvin Curran
4. 2017 – Andrew Roth
5. 2017 – Marielle V Jakobsons
6. 2017 – Annea Lockwood
7. 2018 – Bill Fontana
8. 2018 – Michael Pisaro
9. 2018 – Joshua Churchill and John Davis
10. 2018 – Linda Bouchard with Kyle Bruckmann
11. 2019 – Andy Guthrie
12. 2019 – Matthew Burtner
13. 2020 – Charles Amirkhanian
14. 2020 – Jim Nollman
15. 2021 – Hildegard Westerkamp
16. 2022 – Karen Power
17. 2022 – Christopher Luna-Mega
18. 2023 – Wendy Reid
19. 2025 – Margaret Leng Tan
