Join The Thunder Bay Museum and the Thunder Bay Conservatory of Music in celebrating World Listening Day, founded to celebrate Canadian environmentalist and composer Raymond Murray Schafer. Half concert, half educational lecture, this celebration will be sure to delight lovers of music, Canadian history, and environmentalism.

Schafer is widely known as the founder of acoustic ecology, a field which studies our natural environment through sound.

A string quartet will be performing two of Schafer’s works:

String Quartet No. 2 (“Waves”), 1976. Inspired by his research through his World Soundscape Project at Simon Fraser University, “Waves” is a musical interpretation of Schafer’s field recordings of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans at both Canadian coasts from the late 1960s to the mid-70s.

String Quartet No. 10 (“Winter Birds”), 2005. This is a depiction of the nature and wildlife soundscape during the early 2000s around Schafer’s own farm near Indian River, Ontario.

The evening will also include a multimedia lecture by biologist George Holborn about his work for the Ministry of Natural Resources, recording and monitoring birds and other wildlife over several decades in the boreal forests through Northwestern Ontario.

Refreshments will be provided at intermission, and as an added “acoustic refreshment,” Holborn, also an accomplished baritone soloist, will be interpreting Samuel Barber’s “Dover Beach” for voice and string quartet.

Artists:
George Holborn, lecturer, vocalist, and narrator
Thomas Cosbey and Michelle Zapf-Belanger, violins
Natalie Friesen, viola
Bryce Penny, cello

Thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for support of this fascinating look into our changing Canadian natural environments.