Soundsketches Releases Feb 3!
Happy to announce that my soundsketches of a desert suburb releases on Feb 3, 2025. This release has been a long time in coming! It will be available on Bandcamp and all the usual streaming services.
Desert Fence Busting
Great day removing legacy barbed wire with Desert Fence Busters. This is a powerful collaboration among Arizona Fish and Game, Friends of Ironwood National Monument, and many other local partners to create wildlife corridors in the Sonoran Desert. The seven teams, with 48 total workers took down about 2.5 miles of unused fencing. Tucson Audubon Society also capped 52 "death pipes.” A local rancher removed most of the t-posts on which fencing was strung.
Back in Arizona
Photo credit: Suzanne Fallender
I had a wonderful time visiting family on Cape Cod over the holidays. Quiet (and COLD) beaches meant quiet time to record. Hopefully this stuff will find its way into some future projects.
Sonoran Soundscapes Radio Now Live
I am happy to report that my internet radio station, Sonoran Soundcapes, is now live and available for 24/7 streaming. For now, it is being hosted by Radio.co and can be heard via the player on this website. It’s going to be a permanent work in progress, I think, as I add more content and consider ways to expand its reach. But, for now, it’s here and existing.
Upper Verde Wildlife Area with Gary Beverly
We had an incredible afternoon with Gary Beverly, chair of Citizens Water Advocacy Group, hiking around and learning about the Big Chino Watershed and the Upper Verde Wildlife Area, hosted by Prescott’s Natural History Institute. No one has done more to help protect the Upper Verde and a sustainable water supply for Arizona than Gary. He is really remarkable. Focus today on the amazing efforts to designate the Upper Verde as a “wild and scenic” river, as much of the section below Beasley RAP and Horseshoe Dam is. The Verde needs our help — without conservation and attention to overdraft from the aquifer, the Upper Verde will likely go dry within three decades.
Compost X featured on Ears Have Eyes podcast/radio
My collaborative work with the amazing Vienna-based sound artist, Evamaria Muller, was featured on the Canadian sound art radio program and podcast, Hears Have Eyes on Dec. 11, 2024. Great show and really important work they are doing there. Have a listen. Eva and I met at CAMP in August and have been “audio penpals” since then. More work to come from us…
"Montezuma Well" recording and sound article
I finished up a fun project focused on “Montezuma Well” near Rimrock, AZ. It features a serendipitous field recording made at this remarkable natural spring and sinkhole in July 2024 and a voice over describing the important geological and cultural features of the site. The recording will come out sometime through the Wildlife Sound Recording Society’s sound magazine. There’s an accompanying article that hopefully will be published in their journal sometime this year. All this was inspired by a fantastic guided tour of the Well by Larry Stevens from the Museum of Northern Arizona and the Spring Stewardship Institute. But you can have a sneak-preview listen here!
Desert Soundsketches accepted for Radiophrenia Festival
Super excited that soundsketches of a desert suburb has been accepted to be played in its entirety as part of the Radiophrenia Sound Art Festival. Radiophrenia will take over the airwaves of 87.5 in Glasgow from April 7-21, 2025. Soundsketches wil be released on its own on Feb 3 through all the usual platforms.
State of the Verde Watershed Conference
It’s been an informative and interesting couple of days at the Friends of the Verde River’s biannual watershed conference. Keynote address given by former Arizona governor Bruce Babbit, who has been instrumental in advancing the health and sustainability of the state’s riparian habitats. Friends prepares a Report Card, which I encourage you to check out.
Back from CAMP!
I had an amazing time with Jana Winderen and an incredible group of artists and creative thinkers at CAMP’s ‘listening around the surface” workshop/residency in the French Pyrenees in August. Jana’s personal style and way of engagement was transformative and the ideas and projects of the other workshoppers were deeply inspiring. I’ve never felt so excited to be working in sound art. Thank you to Jana, CAMP, and all my new friends.
Three pieces broadcast on framework:radio
Three sound compositions, duration, gray aquatic, and needlebox, were broadcast on July 30, 2023 on the always interesting and engaging framework radio/podcast program. Thanks to Patrick for sharing the work and for keeping this incredible platform going for many years. All three are available for streaming and purchase on my Bandcamp site.
Field recording included in Cities & Memory's "Music for Sleep"
My field recordings of the pedestrian bridge at Tempe Town Lake were included in the Cities & Memory collection “Music for Sleep” and were used by the French composer Daniel Chudley-LeCorre’s piece “Lucidity’s Keep.” Somehow there’s no attribution to the field recordists as co-composers. Hmm.