Following the Flight of the Monarchs: An interdisciplinary ecoacoustics project

‘Following the Flight of the Monarchs’ is an interdisciplinary project bringing together artists and scientists, connecting with ecosystems and communities along the migration routes of monarch butterflies as they travel the 3,000 mile journey between Mexico and Canada each year. The project, led by Rob Mackay (Senior Lecturer in Music at Newcastle University), connects with the international BIOM project led by Leah Barclay at the University of the Sunshine Coast (http://www.biospheresoundscapes.org/) and SoundCamp (http://soundtent.org/) to map the changing soundscapes of UNESCO Biosphere Reserves through art, science and technology. 

Streamboxes are being installed in 5 locations along the monarch butterfly migration routes between Canada and Mexico. These will livestream the soundscapes of these different ecosystems 24/7 via the Locus Sonus Soundmap (http://locusonus.org/soundmap/051/). The first of the boxes was successfully installed in the Cerro Pelón UNESCO monarch butterfly reserve in Mexico in 2018, and another streambox was installed at Point Pelee National Park in Canada in 2019. Further streamboxes are due for installation in Virginia, Texas, and Northern California. A collaboration is also underway with Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biosphere Preserve in Southern California. The streams are being used for ecosystem monitoring as well as integrating into artworks which are raising awareness of the issues the monarchs highlight, whose numbers have declined by nearly 90% over the past two decades due to industrial use of herbicides, deforestation, and climate change. 

So far, there have been a number of creative outputs, including an immersive audiovisual installation which toured internationally, including the Eden Project and the New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. More recently an audiovisual telematic performance piece has been developed connecting performers in Mexico, USA, Canada and the UK in real-time with soundscapes streamed from ecosystems across the monarchs’ migration routes. 

Rob created a 30 minute radio programme about the project for BBC Radio 3’s Between the Ears series, which was broadcast in January 2021. It was Pick of the Day in the Radio Times. It is still available to listen to online, combining interviews with monarch specialists in Canada, USA and Mexico, alongside binaural field recordings (including the rushing sound of millions of monarch butterfly wings), and musical performances recorded in the reserves. 

Links:

• Project Website: https://followingtheflightofthemonarchs.com
• BBC Radio 3 programme: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qyhz
• Flight of the Monarchs installation videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dhbv63REKrM
• Networking the Flight of the Monarchs Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jpbb9dnOHPY&feature=youtu.be
• Personal Website: https://robmackay.net
• Interview on WGXC Radio, New York (13’24” - 31’05”): https://wavefarm.org/wf/archive/hjjaj1

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Early English Church Music is published by Stainer & Bell on behalf of The British Academy. The aim of the series is to make available church music from the eleventh to the seventeenth centuries in a form both scholarly and practical. The present General Editor is Magnus Williamson; the chairman is Prof. Peter Wright (Nottingham University). The series includes work by anonymous and undeservedly neglected figures, as well as much of the output of acknowledged masters such as Thomas Tallis, John Taverner and John Sheppard. The series has four main strands: editions of polyphony composed before c. 1530 (presented in the distinctive diamond-headed notation first used in EECM 42); editions of polyphony composed after c. 1530 (in 'round' notation); editions of chant (in 'square' notation); and facsimile editions of polyphonic sources. The series has currently published 56 volumes; edited by William Summers and Peter Lefferts, vol. 57 will comprise music manuscripts of the thirteenth century in facsimile; vol.58 will be an edition of the Sarum Lady Mass (ed. John Harper, Sally Harper & Matthew Cheung-Salisbury).

The UK’s first ever national live music census took place in spring 2017: for 24 hours from noon on Thursday 9th March, an army of volunteers went out and about to live music events in Glasgow, Newcastle-Gateshead, Oxford, Leeds, Southampton and Brighton (and 1st June in Liverpool), from pub gigs to massed choirs to arena concerts. A nationwide online survey for musicians, venues, promoters and audiences was online from March until June.

The intention was to help measure live music’s cultural and economic value, discover what challenges the sector is facing and inform policy to help it flourish. The census covers all genres and takes a broad definition of live music to include events featuring DJs.

The UK Live Music Census was organised by researchers from the Live Music Exchange research group, a collaboration across the universities of Edinburgh, Newcastle and the University of Turku (Finland). In 2015, the same researchers organised a pilot live music census in Edinburgh, inspired by work in Melbourne by Dobe Newton in 2012.

http://uklivemusiccensus.org/

After two difficult years during which live classical music performances were mostly shut down, both singers and their audiences are now slowly returning to live performing.  The physical, mental, relational, and artistic wellbeing of classical singers has been impacted by the experience, and longer-term wellbeing challenges remain as further uncertainties over newer variants, restructuring of musical institutions and audiences' fear of crowds affect both performers and audiences alike in this new post-Covid 'normal'.

Led by ICMuS Head of Performance Dr. Larry Zazzo and Senior Lecturer Dr. Adam Behr, this qualitative study funded by the British Academy invited professional classical singers from five different countries to share their experiences during the pandemic, and measure its impact, both short and long term, on their wellbeing. 

A preliminary report on findings from this study was published by the Journal of Musical Health and Wellbeing in Autumn 2021.

Newcastle University hosted a one day symposium in November 2022, Singing Again: Classical Singer Wellbeing and COVID-19.  Invited singers from the study were joined by wellbeing practitioners, performance science experts and invited guests from the classical music industry including Natalie Eastwood (Clinical Lead (SLT- Speech Language Therapy) in Voice at Newcastle Hospitals), Philippa Anderson(Vocal Rehabilitation Coach and BAPAM Registered Practitioner), Philip Morris (North of England Regional Officer, Musicians Union), Professor Aaron Williamon Director, Centre for Performance Science, Royal College of Music and Imperial College, London, Claire Cordeaux Director of the British Association of Performing Arts Medicine (BAPAM), Bill Bankes-Jones (Opera director, Founder/Artistic Director of Tete-a-Tete Opera, Director of Freelancers Make Theatre Work), and opera singers Christina Clark (soprano),Anna Bonitatibus (mezzo soprano), and Luigi DeDonato (bass)

It was an opportunity for all to reflect back on the challenges to performer wellbeing over the pandemic and to consider its lasting legacies, providing an opportunity for discussions of the ways in which performers can find wellbeing support both within their community and by the cultural and government classical performing ecosystem.

Videos of the event, including some opera arias and duets by the participating artists (accompanied by our head of keyboard David Murray), are available here on the ICMuS Youtube channel.

What is consciousness? Why and when do we have it? Where does it come from, and how does it relate to the lump of squishy grey matter in our heads, or to our material and social worlds? While neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, historians and cultural theorists offer widely different perspectives on these fundamental questions concerning what it is like to be human, most agree that consciousness represents a 'hard problem'.

The Music and Consciousness project asks what our knowledge and experiences of music might bring to this set of problems – and, conversely, considers how questions about consciousness might be illuminative for music studies. The project was jointly instigated by David Clarke (Professor of Music, ICMuS) and Eric Clarke (Heather Professor of Music, Oxford University), who co-convened the first International Conference on Music and Consciousness at Sheffield University in 2006. Selected papers from the conference were further developed, along with additional invited contributions, in a book edited by Clarke and Clarke entitled Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011).

As the subtitle suggest, the book has a strongly multidisciplinary complexion, with contributions drawing on numerous disciplines and subdisciplines, including phenomenology, music psychology, critical theory, cultural and historical musicology, psychoanalysis, computer science and Buddhist and Indian thought. Current and former ICMuS researchers have also played a significant role in the project, with contributions to the book and/or the conference from Paul Attinello, Ian Biddle, David Clarke, Richard Elliott, Bennett Hogg and Bethany Lowe.

The project continues to unfold, not least in subsequent work by ICMuS researchers – for example in the phenomenological dimensions of Hogg’s Landscape Quartet project ; in a keynote paper given by David Clarke at the 4th International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts, Lincoln University, May 2011; and in Attinello’s emerging interest in Jungian psychoanalysis. David Clarke and Eric Clarke were invited to contribute a revised version of their joint Preface to Music and Consciousness to a special issue of the journal Arts and Humanities in Higher Education devoted to a defence of the Humanities in HE. And a Second International Conference on Music and Consciousness is planned for April 2015, co-directed by Clarke, Clarke and Ruth Herbert (also a contributor to Music and Consciousness), and taking place at Oxford University.