Bernie Krause

Activist, Artist, Change Agent, Environmentalist, Life mentor, Musician, Scientist, Writer/Editor

Since 1968, Bernie Krause has traveled the world recording and archiving the sounds of creatures and environments large and small. Working at the research sites of Jane Goodall (Gombe, Tanzania), Birute Galdikas (Camp Leakey, Borneo), and Dian Fossey (Karisoke, Rwanda), he identified the concept of biophony based on the relationships of individual creatures to the total biological soundscape as each establishes frequency and/or temporal bandwidth within a given habitat. His contributions helped establish the foundation of a new bioacoustic discipline: Soundscape Ecology. Krause has produced 55 natural soundscape albums in addition to the design of interactive, non-redundant environmental sound sculptures for museums and other public spaces. His installations can be experienced at the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC), the California Academy of Sciences (SF), the Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Chicago Science Museum, the American Museum of Natural History (NYC), five special commissions at the World Financial Center (NYC that performed October/November 2006) and over 30 other venues in N. America and Europe. During his life as a professional studio musician, Krause earned the Pete Seeger slot in the Weavers (1963), and with his late music partner, Paul Beaver, introduced the Moog synthesizer to pop music and film. The team's work can be heard on over 250 albums and 135 feature films released between 1967 and 1980 including "Apocalypse Now," and "Rosemary's Baby." Krause, who holds a PhD in Creative Arts with an internship in Bioacoustics, was a key figure in establishing the concept of natural soundscapes as a resource for the U. S. National Park Service and authored the educational soundscape manual for the agency that resulted in a recent book/CD, "Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of Natural World" (Wilderness Press, 2002). In 2006, under the auspices of US Fish & Wildlife, the Calgary Zoo, Google, Stanford, Harvard Universities, the University of Utah, and several other institutions, he led three teams to capture the first natural soundscape examples ever recorded in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Krause has served as an adjunct professor on the graduate faculty of Purdue University. Krause lives with his wife, Katherine (Kat) in Glen Ellen, California. His new book, "The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places," was published by Little Brown (Hachette) March, 2012.

Finding a home for my natural sound archive that includes requisite funding for a named academic chair, the Center for Soundscape Studies, and the Global Soundscape Project.

While a picture is worth a thousand words, a natural soundscape is worth a thousand pictures.

Bioacoustics, Music

As of 1 June 2013, I'm new to TED and so have no narrative, yet.

Sailing.