I led a 3-day workshop in mid-June, 2018 for over 20 graduate students of the International Media Cultural Work program at the Dieburg Media Campus of Hochschule Darmstadt. Their prompt, “How do you actively others in listening for everyday sounds” was performed in the public finissage of their exhibition at the Rathaus and Museum Schloss Fechenbach on Sunday, June 24 in Dieburg.
Learn to listen and recognize the calls of Chicago area frogs
Saturday May 19
7:30–8:30 pm
West Ridge Nature Preserve
5801 N. Western Ave.
We’re stepping off this Saturday on Nature Sounds at Night, the first #soundwalk of our Night Out #InTheParks series at West Ridge Nature Preserve: please join us! https://t.co/pGACY9aiI7
— ericleonardson (@eleona) May 14, 2018
See the full Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology Summer Soundwalk Series.
Get the full Night Out in the Parks schedule through the My Chi Parks™ app!
Join The Lucky Trikes, World Listening Project, Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, and me to celebrate World Listening Day. This year’s theme is “Listening to the Ground,” created by composer and sound artist Pauline Oliveros. 
We start at 6:00 PM and conclude at 7:30 PM, in Garibaldi Park.
Address:
1520 W Polk St
Chicago, Illinois 60607
Find us on top of the hill.
The Lucky Trikes is a storytelling chamber band, and another Night Out in the Parks partner. We will lead a soundwalk around the park as part of World Listening Day. We’ll do some “ear cleaning” exercises conceived by R. Murray Schafer and some community listening, and even Deep Listening as conceived by Pauline Oliveros.
And read lots of stories about nature and city sounds and listening!
Take a walk at night, and walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.—Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016)
Pauline Oliveros in 2015. Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
World Listening Day is an annual global event held on July 18, the birthday of Canadian composer and founder of acoustic ecology, R. Murray Schafer (b. 1933). This year’s theme is “Listening to the Ground” devised by Pauline Oliveros who passed last Thanksgiving Day at age 84. As a well-known woman pioneer of electronic music composition, improviser, teacher, and founder of Deep Listening, she was a friend and inspiration to many of us. Continue reading
5801 N. Western Ave.
Saturday, June 24
7:30 – 9:30 PM
Frogs and toads are considered bellwether species. Their emergence or disappearance indicate changes in the health of our environment. Our evening soundwalk with Eric Leonardson will provide an introduction to some of the sounds of the several species, as well as their presence within the overall West Ridge soundscape. Learn about the West Ridge frog monitoring and Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum’s Calling Frog Survey. Decode the signals and undertones of plants, animals, and urban life. Become a citizen scientist. (Rain date June 24.)
Follow the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology to learn more 2017 Soundwalks In the Parks series.
Big thanks to the Chicago Parks Foundation for posting the June 1st, “Soundwalking in Chicago Parks,” interview highlighting the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology’s Night Out In the Parks soundwalk series, employing local teaching artists with support of the Chicago Park District.
I describe how our thematically-focused soundwalks can serve as immersive, mindful ways to entertain, research, and discover a rich variety of meanings and interrelationships in one’s soundscape.
It is my pleasure to announce the next set of soundwalks led by Chicago teaching artists, alum of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology. The Summer Soundwalks In The Parks Series kicks off at 5:00 PM on Saturday, May 8 at Ping Tom Park with “A Sonic Taste of Chinatown” led by Amanda Gutierrez. Address: 1700 S. Wentworth Ave. (meet at the Pagoda)
Dear Friends, Happy New Year greetings!
At 6pm Sunday, 8 January I will join the Apple Box Orchestra in a large tribute for Pauline Oliveros, the great female pioneer of electronic music and founder/exponent of Deep Listening, who died at age 84, on 26 November 2016.
FRIDMAN GALLERY
287 Spring Street
New York, NY 10013
between Varick and Hudson
(646) 345-9831
info@fridmangallery.com
This tribute launches the New Ear Festival ’17 at Fridman Gallery 8–16 January. Gallery director Iliya Fridman wrote…
The idea is to assemble an “Apple Box Orchestra” consisting of live, telematic and pre-recorded performers throughout the day. Here is Pauline’s description of the piece:
…remembering the instruments I made in San Francisco at the end of the ’50s and remembering I had a piece called “Apple Box.” I had an old apple box I liked and I knew. It was like an old friend as well, because an apple box that has seasoned wood is a very resonant box. I used to amplify the box and put all kinds of things on the box to play: curb scrapers from automobiles, little implements from the kitchen — anything, small little things — and then amplify them, do things with them, make sounds.
Pauline Oliveros and Seth Cluett – 9 Evenings +50 from Fridman Gallery on Vimeo.
An invitation to Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology’s next soundwalk in the Ryerson Woods Conservation Area.
1:00 – 3:00 p.m. Sunday, November 20
Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods
21850 N. Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015
847.968.3343
info@brushwoodcenter.org
$3/person. Register here or call 224.633.2426 to register by phone.
On this soundwalk I will be engage participants in their experience of the wooded soundscape, and making a sound map of the place, bounded by the Des Plaines River and River Woods Road. A soundwalk, as I offered in this piece, may be conducted in many different ways.
The short “What is a soundwalk?” video offers a media introduction on this practice.
Listening ahead, the final three soundwalks in Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology’s 2016 Night Out In the Parks series happen in December, in these parks on these dates, with these teaching artists:
Please visit Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology exact times, details. To receive email updates, subscribe to my newsletter. Thanks!