Bernard L. Krause (born December 8, 1938) is an American musician and soundscape ecologist. In 1968, he founded Wild Sanctuary, an organization dedicated to the recording and archiving of natural soundscapes. Krause is an author, a bio-acoustician, a speaker, and natural sound artist who coined the terms

geophony Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the ''Handbook for Acoustic Ecology'' edited by Ba ...

biophony Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the ''Handbook for Acoustic Ecology'' edited by Ba ...

, and

anthropophony Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the ''Handbook for Acoustic Ecology'' edited by Ba ...

Biography

Krause was born in

Detroit, Michigan Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at ...

. From 1957, he worked as a recording engineer and producer in

Ann Arbor Anne, alternatively spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace'. Related names include Annie. Anne is sometimes used as a male name in th ...

while an undergraduate student. Krause joined

The Weavers The Weavers were an American folk music quartet based in the Greenwich Village area of New York City originally consisting of Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman. Founded in 1948, the group sang traditional folk songs ...

in 1963, occupying the tenor position originated by co-founder

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American folk singer and social activist. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, Seeger also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of the Weavers, notably ...

until they disbanded in early 1964.

Electronic music

Krause moved to the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Gov ...

to study

electronic music Electronic music is a Music genre, genre of music that employs electronic musical instruments, digital instruments, or electronics, circuitry-based music technology in its creation. It includes both music made using electronic and electromech ...

Mills College Mills College at Northeastern University is a private college in Oakland, California and part of Northeastern University's global university system. Mills College was founded as the Young Ladies Seminary in 1852 in Benicia, California; it was re ...

. During this period Krause met Paul Beaver and together they formed Beaver & Krause. They also served as the Moog company's sales representatives on the U.S. West Coast. As such, they were able to exploit the growing fascination in the new synthesizer sounds among rock and pop musicians, an interest that was partly influenced by these artists' consumption of

hallucinogenic drug Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categoriz ...

s, and the increasingly generous advances they received from their record companies. In June 1967, Beaver & Krause set up a stall at the

Monterey Pop Festival The Monterey International Pop Festival was a three-day music festival held June 16 to 18, 1967, at the Monterey County Fairgrounds in Monterey, California. The festival is remembered for the first major American appearances by the Jimi Hendrix ...

, where they introduced the Moog III to the musicians and attendees at the festival. The team played

Moog synthesizer The Moog synthesizer is a modular synthesizer developed by the American engineer Robert Moog. Moog debuted it in 1964, and Moog's company R. A. Moog Co. (later known as Moog Music) produced numerous models from 1965 to 1981, and again from 201 ...

the Monkees The Monkees were an American rock and pop band, formed in Los Angeles in 1966, whose lineup consisted of the American actor/musicians Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork alongside English actor/singer Davy Jones. The group was conc ...

' song " Star Collector" (1967), one of the first pop group recordings to feature synthesizer. In 1967 they released ''The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music''. It was the first West Coast recording to utilize

Dolby Dolby Laboratories, Inc. (often shortened to Dolby Labs and known simply as Dolby) is an American company specializing in audio noise reduction, audio encoding/compression, spatial audio, and HDR imaging. Dolby licenses its technologies to ...

A301 (without meters) noise reduction as an inherent part of their production. Beaver & Krause, individually or as a team, went on to sell Moog IIIs to musicians and perform on their recordings with the instrument. In November 1968 Krause was asked by

George Harrison George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian ...

to demonstrate the synthesizer after performing on a session for

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor ...

artist

Jackie Lomax John Richard Lomax (10 May 1944 – 15 September 2013) was an English guitarist and singer-songwriter. He is best known for his association with George Harrison, who produced Lomax's recordings for the Beatles' Apple record label in the late 1 ...

in Los Angeles. According to Krause, without his knowledge, permission, or compensation, Harrison made a recording of the demonstration and issued an unauthorized version as "No Time Or Space" on his '' Electronic Sound'' album the following year. Because of their studio work in Hollywood,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, Beaver & Krause are credited with helping to introduce the synthesizer to pop music and film.

Soundscape recording

Since 1979, Krause has concentrated on the recording and archiving of wild natural soundscapes from around the world. These recordings – works of art and science commissioned primarily by museums, aquaria, and zoos for their

diorama A diorama is a replica of a scene, typically a three-dimensional full-size or miniature model, sometimes enclosed in a glass showcase for a museum. Dioramas are often built by hobbyists as part of related hobbies such as military vehicle mode ...

s and sound installations worldwide – have been mixed into ambient tracks for numerous feature films, and downloadable

field recording Field recording is the term used for an audio recording produced outside a recording studio, and the term applies to recordings of both natural and human-produced sounds. It also applies to sound recordings like electromagnetic fields or vibra ...

albums from the world's rare habitats. In 1985 Krause, with colleague, Diana Reiss, helped lure Humphrey the Whale, a migrating female humpback that had wandered into Sacramento River Delta and apparently got lost, back to the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the conti ...

. As scientific co-directors of the operation, they used recordings of humpbacks feeding, recorded by two graduate students from the

University of Hawaii A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

, recordings that Krause modified to eliminate extraneous noise and add different characteristics to the audio tracks so that the whale would not habituate to the one audio short example that was provided by the students' graduate professor. Krause's 1988 CD album, ''Gorillas in the Mix'' (

Rykodisc Rykodisc is an American record label owned by Warner Music Group, operating as a unit of WMG's Independent Label Group and is distributed through Alternative Distribution Alliance. History Claiming to be the first CD-only independent record ...

), is composed entirely from sampled animal sounds, played from sampling keyboards. Working in the field of

soundscape ecology Soundscape ecology is the study of the acoustic relationships between living organisms, human and other, and their environment, whether the organisms are marine or terrestrial. First appearing in the ''Handbook for Acoustic Ecology'' edited by Ba ...

, a sub-category of ecoacoustics, Krause introduced a number of terms and concepts into the discipline to further define the sources of sound within the soundscape. They include

, the first sounds heard on earth consisting of non-biological natural sounds such as the effect of wind in trees or grasses, waves at the ocean or lakeshore, or movement of the earth. The second acoustic source is called

, the collective signature produced at one time by all sound-producing organisms in a given habitat. The third, and last of these elements is referred to as

, or human-generated acoustic signatures. In the final category, some sources represent controlled sound, such as music, theatre, or language. While a large percentage consists of incoherent or chaotic sound, referred to as noise. The first and last terms were implemented along with his late colleague, Stuart Gage, Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University. Krause was invited to present a TED Global talk at the 2013 Edinburgh conference and the keynote talk at the first conference of the International Society of Ecoacoustics (ISE), a worldwide organization, meeting in Paris in June, 2014. In July 2014, the Cheltenham Music Festival premiered "The Great Animal Orchestra: Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes," a collaboration with friend and colleague, Richard Blackford, former

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

Oxford Composer-in-Residence. Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and conducted by Martyn Brabbins, the theme is based on Krause's 2012 book of the same title. The work integrates natural soundscapes into the orchestral textures of a major symphonic piece. The symphony was recorded and released on CD by Nimbus Records in September 2014. On April 3, 2015, Krause and Blackford premiered the score for their first ballet, "Biophony", performed by Alonzo King LINES Ballet at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. His most recent two books, published by Yale University Press, are titled ''Voices of the Wild: Animal Songs, Human Din, and the Call to Save Natural Soundscapes'', and "Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World". In September, 2021, "The Power of Tranquility in a Very Noisy World," On July 1, 2016, the

Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain The Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, known simply as the Fondation Cartier, is a contemporary art museum located at 261 boulevard Raspail in the 14th arrondissement of the French capital, Paris. History The Fondation Cartier was cr ...

in Paris opened the first major natural soundscape exhibit in a contemporary art museum. Based on his book, "The Great Animal Orchestra," the

sound sculpture Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art ...

serves as an early retrospective of Krause's work and includes many examples of his collection along with supporting graphic and visual media. The visual elements were generated by the London-based organization, United Visual Artists (UVA). The exhibit ran until 7 January 2017 and opened as part of a larger Fondation Cartier collection at the Seoul (S. Korea) Museum of Art in May, 2017.The Great Animal Orchestra art piece has subsequently been shown at Shanghai's Power Station of Art, 2018, and at the 180 The Strand Gallery, London in 2019. In the fall of 2021, the exhibit was featured at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. In the spring of 2022, the work opened at the 23rd Biennale in Sydney, Australia, and also Lille, France at the same time.

Personal life

Krause and his wife, Katherine, live in Sonoma, California. The Krauses' home, with his archives, equipment, and all of their personal possessions were destroyed in a wildfire on 11 October 2017. His audio recordings, though, were backed up off-site.

Discography

* 1967 Beaver & Krause – ''The Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music'' (

Nonesuch Records Nonesuch Records is an American record company and label owned by Warner Music Group, distributed by Warner Records (formerly called Warner Bros. Records), and based in New York City. Founded by Jac Holzman in 1964 as a budget classical label, N ...

) (Revised and repackaged with new material by Bernie Krause in 1980) * 1968 Beaver & Krause – ''Ragnarok – Electronic Funk'' ( Limelight Records) * 1970 Beaver & Krause – ''In a Wild Sanctuary'' (

Warner Bros. Records Warner Records Inc. (formerly Warner Bros. Records Inc.) is an American record label. A subsidiary of the Warner Music Group, it is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. It was founded on March 19, 1958, as the recorded music division of ...

) * 1971 Beaver & Krause – ''Gandharva'' (featuring

Mike Bloomfield Michael Bernard Bloomfield (July 28, 1943 – February 15, 1981) was an American guitarist and composer, born in Chicago, Illinois, who became one of the first popular music superstars of the 1960s to earn his reputation almost entirely on his ...

, Ray Brown,

Gerry Mulligan Gerald Joseph Mulligan (April 6, 1927 – January 20, 1996), also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instru ...

, Gail Laughton, Ronnie Montrose,

Howard Roberts Howard Mancel Roberts (October 2, 1929 – June 28, 1992) was an American jazz guitarist, educator, and session musician. Early years Roberts was born in Phoenix, Arizona to Damon and Vesta Roberts, and began playing guitar at the age of 8 - ...

Bud Shank Clifford Everett "Bud" Shank Jr. (May 27, 1926 – April 2, 2009) was an American alto saxophonist and flautist. He rose to prominence in the early 1950s playing lead alto and flute in Stan Kenton's Innovations in Modern Music Orchestra and thro ...

and others) (Warner Bros. Records) * 1972 Beaver & Krause – ''All Good Men'' (Warner Bros. Records) * 1975 Bernie Krause – ''Citadels of Mystery'' ( Takoma Records/

Chrysalis Records Chrysalis Records () is a British record label that was founded in 1968. The name is both a reference to the pupal stage of a butterfly and a combination of its founders' names, Chris Wright and Terry Ellis. It started as the Ellis-Wright ...

) * 1981 Bernard Krause – ''The New Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music'' ( Nonesuch) * 1986 Bernie Krause – ''Equator'' ( The Nature Company) * 1987 Bernie Krause – ''Nature'' (The Nature Company) * 1988 Bernie Krause – ''Distant Thunder'' (The Nature Company) * 1988 Bernie Krause – ''Mountain Stream'' (The Nature Company) * 1988 Bernie Krause – ''Gentle Ocean'' (The Nature Company) * 1988 Bernie Krause – ''Morning Songbirds'' (The Nature Company) * 1988 Bernie Krause – ''Sounds of a Summer's Evening'' (The Nature Company) * 1988 Bernie Krause – ''Jungle Shoes/Fish Wrap'' (CD Single,

) * 1988 Bernie Krause & Human Remains – ''Gorillas in the Mix'' (Rykodisc) * 1989 Bernie Krause & Philip Aaberg – ''Meridian'' (The Nature Company) * 1989 Bernie Krause – ''Tropical Jungle'' (The Nature Company) * 1989 Bernie Krause – ''Gorilla'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1990 Bernie Krause – ''Natural Voices/African Song Cycle'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1990 Bernie Krause – ''Green Meadow Stream'' (North Sound) * 1990 Bernie Krause – ''Woodland Journey'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1990 Bernie Krause – ''Dawn at Trout Lake'' (North Sound) * 1990 Bernie Krause – ''Amazon Days Amazon Nights'' (North Sound) * 1991 Bernie Krause – ''Ocean Wonders'' (North Sound) * 1991 Bernie Krause – ''Tropical Thunder: A Rainstorm in Borneo'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1991 Ruth Happel with Bernie Krause – ''Loons of Echo Pond'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1991 Bernie Krause,

Bob Dorough Robert Lrod Dorough (December 12, 1923 – April 23, 2018) was an American bebop and cool jazz vocalist, pianist, composer, songwriter, arranger, and producer. Dorough became famous as the composer and performer of songs in the TV series ''Scho ...

, Janis Lawrence & Jeff Kohler – ''Wild Times at the Water Hole'' (Creatures 'n' Kids) * 1991 Bernie Krause - ''Arctic Summer'' * 1993 Bernie Krause - ''Songs of the Whales & Dolphins'' (The Nature Company) * 1994 Bernie Krause – '' Mata Atlantica: A Rare Brazilian Rain Forest'' (North Sound) * 1994 Bernie Krause & Ruth Happel – ''Desert Solitudes'' (North Sound) * 1994 Bernie Krause – ''Ocean Dreams'' (North Sound) * 1994 Bernie Krause – ''Midsummer Nights'' (North Sound) * 1994 Bernie Krause – ''Nature's Lullabyes: Ocean/Rain/Stream'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1994 Bernie Krause – ''African Adventures'' (North Sound) * 1994 Bernie Krause & Philip Aaberg – ''A Wild Christmas'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 1994 Bernie Krause – ''Whales, Wolves & Eagles of

Glacier Bay Glacier Bay Basin in southeastern Alaska, in the United States, encompasses the Glacier Bay and surrounding mountains and glaciers, which was first proclaimed a U.S. National Monument on February 25, 1925, and which was later, on December 2, 198 ...

'' (North Sound) * 1995 Bernie Krause & Louis Sarno – '' Bayaka'' (Ellipsis Arts) * 1995 Bernie Krause & Rodney Franklin – ''Rhythms of Africa'' (Miramar Records) * 1995 Bernie Krause & Rodney Franklin – ''Ocean Odyssey'' (Miramar Records) * 1995 Bernie Krause & Rodney Franklin – ''Rain Forest Dreams'' (Miramar Records) * 1996 Bernie Krause - ''Notes from the Wild'' (bonus disc with the book of the same title) * 1998 Bernie Krause – ''Kalimantaan: Heaven Before Time'' (Miramar Records) * 1998 Bernie Krause – ''Zimbabwe: Gardens of Eden'' (Miramar Records) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''African Safari: Zimbabwe'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Alpine Meadow'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Autumn Day in Yellowstone'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Carolina Woods'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Costa Rica: Hidden Treasures'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Galapagos'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause & Lang Elliott – ''Prairie Winds'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause & Jack Hines – ''Sequoia High Country'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Sonoma Valley Sunrise'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Spring in Corkscrew Swamp'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Sumatra Days, Sumatra Nights'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause – ''Winds Across the Tundra'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2002 Bernie Krause - ''Wild Soundscapes'' (bonus disc with book of the same title) * 2005 Country Joe McDonald with Bernie Krause - ''Natural Imperfections'' (Rag Baby 1037) * 2006 Bernie Krause, Kevin Colver & Martin Stewart – ''Voice of the Arctic Refuge'' (Wild Sanctuary) * 2014 Bernie Krause and Richard Blackford - ''The Great Animal Orchestra: Symphony for Orchestra and Wild Soundscapes,'' Nimbus Records

Bibliography

* "Using ecoacoustic methods to survey the impacts of climate change on biodiversity", Bernie Krause, Almo Farina, Biological Conservation, 195 (2016) 245–254, Jan. 2016 * "The Niche Hypothesis: New Thoughts on Creature Vocalizations and the Relationship Between Natural Sound and Music" WFAE Newsletter, June, 1993 * ''Notes From the Wild: The Nature Recording Expeditions of Bernie Krause'' with companion CD (Ellipsis Arts, 1996, ) * ''Into A Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music & Natural Sound'' with companion CD (

Heyday Books Heyday is an independent nonprofit publisher based in Berkeley, California. Heyday was founded by Malcolm Margolin in 1974 when he wrote, typeset, designed, and distributed ''The East Bay Out'', a guide to the natural history of the hills and b ...

, 1998, ) * ''Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World'' with companion CD (

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universit ...

, 2016, ) * "Anatomy of a Soundscape: Evolving Perspectives," '' J. Audio Eng. Soc.'', Vol. 56, No. 1/2, 2008 January/February * ''The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places,''

Little Brown Little, Brown and Company is an American publishing company founded in 1837 by Charles Coffin Little and James Brown in Boston. For close to two centuries it has published fiction and nonfiction by American authors. Early lists featured Emily ...

, published March 2012 (). * "Voices of the Wild: Animal Songs, Human Din, and the Call to Save Natural Soundscapes," (

, 2015, ) * "Soundscape Ecology: The Science of Sound in the Landscape," Bryan C. Pijanowski, Luis J. Villanueva-Rivera, Sarah L. Dumyahn, Almo Farina, Bernie L. Krause, Brian M. Napoletano, Stuart H. Gage, and Nadia Pieretti, www.biosciencemag.org March 2011 / Vol. 61 No. 3

BioScience ''BioScience'' is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal that is published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. It was established in 1964 and was preceded by the ''AIBS Bulletin'' (1951� ...

, 203-216, (ISSN 0006-3568 print, ISSN 1525-3244 online) * Krause, Bernie, Gage, Stuart H., Joo Wooyeong, "Measuring and interpreting the temporal variability in the soundscape at four places in Sequoia National Park,"

Landscape Ecology Landscape ecology is the science of studying and improving relationships between ecological processes in the environment and particular ecosystems. This is done within a variety of landscape scales, development spatial patterns, and organizati ...

, ISSN 0921-2973, Landscape Ecol, DOI 10.1007/s10980-011-9639-6 * Krause, Bernie, "Bioacoustics: Habitat ambience and ecological balance," (

Whole Earth Review ''Whole Earth Review'' (''Whole Earth'' after 1997) was a magazine which was founded in January 1985 after the merger of the '' Whole Earth Software Review'' (a supplement to the ''Whole Earth Software Catalog'') and the ''CoEvolution Quarterly ...

, No. 57, Winter, 1987, )

References

External links

Bernie Krause biography at ''Wild Sanctuary''
* * *
"The voice of the natural world" (TEDGlobal 2013)Bernie Krause
Interview for NAMM Oral History Program (2010)

Krause sound art exhibition, Paris, (2016) {{DEFAULTSORT:Krause, Bernie American electronic musicians American non-fiction environmental writers Folk musicians from Michigan Soundscape ecology The Weavers members Union Institute & University alumni University of Michigan alumni 1938 births Living people Singers from Detroit American sound artists