Join me on Sunday, July 26, 2026, 3:00–4:30 PM at the Mouse Arts and Letters Club, 555 W. 31st St., for Listening to Herons, a guided listening and sound-composition workshop built from my field recordings of the Black-crowned Night Heron rookery near Lincoln Park Zoo. The event is free, but spots are limited — please RSVP here.
What happens when we listen inside a familiar sound?
This urban colony is an important breeding site for a species listed as endangered in Illinois, studied and protected through the volunteer-driven Chicago Black-crowned Night Heron Project. Amy Lardner, the project’s founder, will be on hand to share context about the rookery, and work by Urban Sketchers Chicago will be on view alongside photographs from the project.
I’ll demonstrate granular synthesis — a technique that breaks recorded sound into extremely small particles that can be reorganized, layered, stretched, and transformed. Beginning with the recognizable calls and activity of the rookery, I’ll build a live soundscape composition that reveals details, rhythms, and relationships within the recording that might otherwise escape our attention.
At a time of habitat loss, species extinction, and accelerating environmental change, listening can help us reconsider the boundaries we place between ourselves and the rest of the living world. We are not outside nature: we are participants in a more-than-human world in which every life is immersed, whether or not we are conscious of our roles and effects within it. My hope is that we come to hear the herons’ soundscape with “new ears” — not simply as source material for art, but as the audible expression of other lives sharing the city with us.
You’re invited to listen, watch the composition develop, and share your responses and questions. No previous experience or equipment is required, and I’ll make my software available afterward to anyone who would like to continue exploring at home.
Listen to my field recording of the Black-crowned Night Heron rookery
Event details
Listening to Herons: Soundscape Composition at the Microsound Level
Sunday, July 26, 2026 · 3:00–4:30 PM
Mouse Arts and Letters Club
555 W. 31st St., Chicago, IL 60616
Free and open to the public. Spots are limited — RSVP through TicketLeap.
Presented in collaboration with the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology, the Chicago Black-crowned Night Heron Project, and Urban Sketchers Chicago.