the nest collective

Alasdair Roberts - Long a-Growing

Alasdair Roberts - Apprentice Boy

Ewan McLennan - Young Edwin in the Lowlands

London Contemporary Voices

London Contemporary Voices

Sam Lee's Speech at XR: A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

Bird Songs in Literature

Rare bird

Rare bird

Photo

Piotr Fajfer, Polónia

'Dibujos en el aire' de Mercedes Ruiz

24-07-2008

Ángel Carmona recibe a dos invitadas de lujo: la bailaora jerezana Mercedes Ruiz, que presenta su nuevo espectáculo 'Dibujos en el aire', y la cantaora catalana Maite Martín, que nos habla de su último disco, 'De fuego y agua', en el que forma trío artístico con las hermanas Katia y Marielle Labèque, ambas virtuosas del piano (23/07/08).

Animal architecture

Animal builders create structures, whether homes, traps, or for courtship display, that amaze us with their apparent ingenuity. But how do creatures with such small brains build these complex forms, sometimes working in teams with clear division of labour towards a common goal? Which skills are inherited and which learned? And how did these behaviours evolve?
In his new book, ‘Built by Animals:

The Natural History of Animal Architecture’, Professor Mike Hansell - Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and former professor of animal architecture - considers builders from across the animal kingdom to explore these questions and reveal the ways in which different animals achieve their building feats.
“Animal architecture is fascinating in its complexity,” said Professor Mike Hansell. “Male bower birds, for example, build structures of twigs decorated with baubles of coloured berries, feathers and flowers to attract females.

Termites build mounds equivalent to three times the height of the tallest skyscrapers, engaging workforces comparable to the biggest human engineering projects. And spiders, the world over, spin elaborate silken traps.”
Mike shows how small-brained animals work in a small-brained way, repeating many simple actions to produce complex results, and the variety of materials, both those available in the environment and self-secreted ones such as silk, to build structures of what seems to us striking ingenuity.

Large-brained animals such as humans or chimpanzees, on the other hand, take a more complex and costly approach.
By considering the differences between these two modes of building, Mike Hansell shows how we can draw some surprising conclusions about animal intelligence and tool-use; learn important lessons about engineering, environmental impact, and the organization of workforces; and even begin to explore the question of whether some animals have an aesthetic sense.

University of Glasgow

Samantha Simpson

Jim Fassett - Symphony of the Birds

Jim Fassett-Born 1904 died 17 December 1986, Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania

Jim Fassett will be remembered by space age pop fans for one amazing piece of work: his 1960 Columbia album, Symphony of the Birds. Working with CBS radio technician Mortimer Goldberg, Fassett painstakingly pieced together fragments from recordings of bird calls originally made in the field by Jerry and Norma Stilwell. By rerecording some of them faster or slower and then superimposing multiple playbacks onto one tape, Fassett and Goldberg wove together the results like an arrangement for symphony orchestra.

Even if you don't appreciate the art of the work, Symphony for the Birds earns the kind of fascination and admiration one holds for achievements like toothpick models of the Eiffel Tower or the world's biggest ball of string. Created in three parts--Andante e lirico; Buffo; and Misterioso--the Symphony was debuted on by Fassett on one of his regular Sunday afternoon programs on CBS radio.

Backing Symphony of the Birds is another Fassett creation, A Revelation in Birdsong Patterns, in which Fassett and Goldberg took field recordings of various songbirds and slowed them down to show the intricate musical motifs hidden to the human ear at the pitch and speed of the actual calls.
Fassett spent most of his working life in radio.

He joined station WBZ in Boston in the late 1920s. A great lover of classical music, he also served as music critic for The Boston Herald. In 1936, he moved to New York City, where he served as assistant musical director for the CBS radio network. Soon after joining CBS, he began hosting the intermission show during the weekly broadcasts of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, a job he held for many years.

In 1942, he was promoted to lead musical director for CBS Radio, a position he held until his retirement in 1963.

He continued to write musical criticism and other articles, and in 1969, he published a travel book, Italian Odyssey.
Recordings

Symphony of the Birds, Ficker C1002
Strange to Your Ears, Columbia ML-4938
Scandinavia, Columbia ML-5147
Hear the Animals Sing, Harmony HL 9506 (kid's record)

Monumentos

Sneaky Cartoons