Bernie Krause’s ‘voice of the natural world’ in local benefit

As Bernie Krause nears a landmark birthday, he is finding that his lifetime of inspiration, creativity and diligence has led to an international fame he never anticipated. Not as a musician – though the former folk singer-turned-electronic music pioneer can lay claim to certain success in that area; nor as a soundscape engineer, whose field recordings have resolved the cacophony of nature into a symphony.

But, of all things, as an artist. Last month an expansive exhibit of his soundscapes opened at the prestigious Fondation Cartier pour l’arte contemporain in Paris, which placed his sound explorations in the context of “an aesthetic meditation, both aural and visual, on the animal kingdom” – a world that is increasingly under threat.

But Krause, a Glen Ellen resident for over 20 years, isn’t hogging the credit on this one. “I was blown away,” he said of the extensive multi-media exhibit assembled by one of Europe’s leading art galleries. “They did an extraordinary job, I have to tell you – I had no idea what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.”

What they did, under the direction of Hervé Chandès, was convert Krause’s “soundscapes” of nature – including animal sounds (which he calls “biophony”) such as bird calls, whale songs and insect chirps, and natural noises (or the “geophony”) such as wind and water – into an immersive exhibit of audio and animation that fairly replicates the complexity of nature within the confines of an art gallery.

Chandès invited himself to Glen Ellen last year to pitch the project, and Krause’s initial skepticism gave way to excitement, then enthusiasm. “I get a lot of requests about this stuff and most of them are disappointing,” said Krause. “They take a lot of energy and there’s not much result, either for visitors or for the creators.”

But what Chandès proposed was dizzying, and after giving his bottom-line – “I said if you can do this from a sound-led perspective and have everything else follow, I’m in” – Krause agreed. Over the next year Krause went to Paris four times to work with the Cartier team, which included Mexican architects Mauricio Rocha and Gabriela Carrillo to design the exhibit space, and an acoustics team called IRCAM (the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics and Music), formed by the composer Pierre Boulez in the 1970s.

The international team also included the UK’s United Visual Artists, or UVA, who designed images to symbolize the “Great Animal Symphony” (the title of Krause’s 2012 book that inspired the exhibit) and the projection system to give the viewer the absorbing experience of the sonic landscapes of the world – from an African dawn to underwater in the Pacific, from the Yukon Delta in Alaska to Lincoln Meadow in the California Sierra and more.

These are among the worlds that Krause has recorded over the years, and in many cases his archives demonstrate the deterioration of soundscapes that global warming is bringing. The loss of habitat means the loss of species; the loss of species means that the great animal orchestra is, every year, a little less great, a little more in danger.

This will be the theme of his upcoming presentation in Sonoma, as a benefit for the Sonoma Ecology Center on whose board he now sits. For the past 23 years he’s made frequent pre-dawn visits to Sugarloaf Ridge State Park to record the sounds of nature, but recently he’s noticed a sad change.

“I had no idea that recording here was going to reveal so much, because I was just doing it for enjoyment,” said Krause. “It was just something I did in the morning and really loved.”

But in the last few years he noted that “things are changing radically.” Fewer and fewer species showed up in his recordings, demonstrating that even in a protected area like the regional park, climate change was having a dramatic, and negative effect.

Though he still enjoys his early-morning forays to Sugarloaf, “it’s always surprising at what’s being lost,” he said. “It’s what you’re not hearing that’s astonishing. It’s like trying to watch ‘Star Wars’ with the sound turned off.”

He recently had published a scientific paper by the Society of Conservation Biology describing what his audio recordings in Sugarloaf have revealed. He’s been gratified to learn that others are beginning to pay attention to what he’s hearing – or not hearing – and that perhaps his life’s work will begin a serious conversation about change.

Of the Cartier exhibit, he said, “They understood it, they took it in, they made it part of their narrative so well integrated that they were able to bring this off as a team. I can’t imagine anyone doing that anywhere else. I‘ve never experienced anything like it.”

The exhibition at Fondation Cartier opened July 2 and continues until Jan. 8, 2017. If it sounds like the only way to see the exhibit is to fly to Paris (“Air France has some wonderful fares right now,” noted Krause), that’s probably true. Thankfully there’s also an interactive online module of images and audio www.legrandorchestredesanimaux.com/en – be sure to wear headphones.

Closer to home, “Voice of the Natural World: An Evening with Bernie Krause” will be at Ramekins Culinary School on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 5 p.m. It will include a gourmet reception, a one-hour presentation by Krause of his two decades of recordings at Sugarloaf, and a question-and-answer period. Tickets are $35, as a benefit for the Sonoma Ecology Center. More information and tickets at www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2581355.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.