Listening with China Blue

What if music could reveal not only how our own minds work, but also how other species experience the world? In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I speak with neuroscientist, musician, and author David Sulzer, also known as composer Dave Soldier, about the mysteries of musical perception and the surprising connections between human and animal minds. From exploring how our brains recognize...

What happens when we stop expecting other species to communicate on human terms? What if listening isn't something we do only with our ears, but with our entire bodies—and with one another? In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I speak with dancer and choreographer Andrea Nann about embodied listening: the ways we perceive through breath, movement, energy, sensation, space, and our awarene...

What happens when we stop expecting other species to communicate on human terms? In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I talk with Jim Nollman, interspecies musician and creator of "Orcas Greatest Hits", about music, orcas, and listening across species. We explore what happens when music becomes a meeting place between species: how Jim Nollman improvises with orcas, how he recognizes when...

What if the world around us is a continuous symphony and listening is how we become part of it? In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I sit down with pioneering acoustic ecology composer Hildegard Westerkamp, whose life's work has transformed the way we think about sound, place, and our relationship with the environment. We explore what happens when we begin to hear the everyday world as m...

What if listening doesn’t simply change what we hear, but determines how we understand and relate to the world around us? In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I sit down with pioneering composer Annea Lockwood to explore her lifelong fascination with sound, the environment, and the visceral ways we experience listening through our bodies. We talk about her belief that listening determines...

What if listening wasn't just something you do with your ears, but a way of connecting with the Earth, your ancestors, and every living thing? In this episode of Listening with China Blue, I sit down with Singing Rain and Laughing Owl of the Association of Native Americans of the Mid-Hudson Valley about oral tradition, listening to birds, trees, rocks, and ancestors, and the belief that every livi...

Field recording, sound mapping, and soundscape storytelling are transforming how we experience the world. In this episode of Listening with China Blue , I speak with Stuart Fowkes , founder of Cities and Memory , one of the world's largest collaborative sound projects, bringing together more than 2,500 artists who remix the world one sound at a time. Since 2014, Stuart has built an extraordinary g...

China Blue speaks with musician Vero Faye Kitsuné who goes by the name C Z A R I N A about how as an indigenous Filipino shamanism, the grandeur of nature and Spain's witches inspired listening for the Dark Wave. Vero Faye Kitsuné is an American award-winning electronic artist, producer, and filmmaker based in Galicia, Spain, she is known for a darkwave/industrial sound inspired by cyberpunk and a...

China Blue speaks with Timothy Blunk a former US political prisoner who served over 13 years in some of America’s most notorious prisons for his activism in resistance to racism, US support for apartheid in South Africa, and involvement in Central America during the 1980s. His prison term included 7 years in solitary confinement in USP Marion. Tim appeared on the television program “20/20” documen...

Internationally recognized art critic Richard Vine, PhD is the former managing editor of Art in America who has taught throughout the world and has produced more than three hundred art articles. His books Range from the career survey of "Odd Nerdrum: Paintings, Sketches, and Drawings" and "New China, New Art," which traces the emergence of avant-garde art in post-Mao China to the crime novel "SoHo...

Listen to Martha Little, a podcast and audio consultant who speaks about listening to others and how compassion can be contagious. Martha Little is an award-winning journalist and executive audio producer whose career has spanned more than 35 years at organizations such as NPR and Amazon’s Audible. Today, Little leads LittleMedia, a creative consultancy that helps companies and individuals elevate...

Next on Listening with China Blue is Richard Humann who speaks about his exhibition based on bone music currently up in New York City and listening for a revolution. Humann is a New York City-based artist who uses a multitude of materials to create installations, sculptures, videos, and sound projects. In his work he delves deep into concepts and ideas like in this case bone music.

My next guest, Scott McVay, helped the world to hear whales sing for the first time. With his wife Hella, he co-discovered the songs of humpback whales—an underwater symphony that became a vinyl phenomenon in 1970 and forever changed how we listen to the sea. His work on whale songs has appeared in Science and Scientific American , and his books, Whales Sing and Other Exuberances and Surprise Enco...

In "Listening with China Blue" hear from Ellen Waterman a Professor of Music and Sound Studies who states that listening equates to care. Ellen Waterman holds the Helmut Kallmann Chair for Music in Canada at Carleton University. There her interdisciplinary research is wide. As a flutist and vocalist she engages in improvisation, performance ecologies, and Deaf and disability-led music where she re...

In "Listening with China Blue" hear from Cynthia McVay the author of "A Field of My Own: A Memoir of Place" who tells about how listening connects to place. McVay is a lifelong creative and environmentalist who chronicles her intimate, two-decade relationship with a flagging orchard in the Hudson Valley. As an architect and general contractor, you will hear how she moved an enormous 180-year-old h...

In "Listening with China Blue" hear from the US National Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate, Ron Whitehead who says "Listening is the greatest art of all" Whitehead is a poet, author and runs the non-profit organization Global Literary Renaissance, to support literature worldwide. He teaches, and collaborates with artists and musicians focusing primarily on the Louisville art scene and Kentucky folk art....

In my podcast "Listening with China Blue" hear from Listen to Esteemed Art Critic, Poet and Author John Yau, speak about listening to artists like: painter, Ed Moses’ who spoke about his gestures as animations, Jasper Johns’ experience about describing his famous Flag painting and Duchamp’s quote about artists not interested in listening. John Yau is a Hudson Valley based American poet and critic...

In this podcast Professor Eric Lewis speaks about how "silence is an action" and his relationship to composer Pauline Oliveros. Eric Lewis is a professor of Philosophy at McGill University, specializing in the philosophy of improvised art, and Black Aesthetics. He is the author of five books, and numerous other publications. He is also on the management team of the International Institute for Crit...

In this podcast hear from Hudson Valley's, Laura Kuhn, Executive Director of the John Cage Foundation who speaks about her relationship with Cage, his understanding of silence and the importance of intentionality. Kuhn helped to establish the John Cage Trust, shortly after the composer’s death in 1992. in 1968 he began working with Cage on a variety of large-scale projects, completing her doctoral...

In my podcast "Listening with China Blue" hear from the interspecies musician and professor David Rothenberg, who explores if bird songs are music, why birds sing at dawn, and how the beauty of whale music got the world to care. David Rothenberg, is a professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, with a special interest in animal sounds as music. He is also a compose...

Hear from Bjorn Eriksson, Composer who speaks about the early years of Deep Listening and creating works that are based by listening and conducting in the moment. Mr. Eriksson is a sound artist, improvisor and composer. He makes electronic music, composes and performs with among others Norrbotten Improvisers Orchestra, Aleatoriska Ensemblen as well as AOM (Avatar Orchestra Metaverse) and DVN-EAO....

Hear from Dame Evelyn Glennie the world's premier solo percussionist who speaks about how she respects the sound and that "listening needs space and time." Dame Evelyn Glennie is the world’s premier solo percussionist. Her solo recordings exceed 40 CDs. A double GRAMMY award winner and BAFTA nominee, Evelyn composes for film, theatre and television. The Evelyn Glennie Podcast was launched in 2020....

Hear from Michael Reiley, a meditation teacher, a Sound Songha producer and a Deep Listening professor speak about listening as a mindfulness tool. Michael Reiley is a producer, therapeutic musician, and meditation teacher focused on helping others to awaken their innate capacity to listen and resonate with the interconnected web of inner and outer soundscapes. Michael Reiley has dedicated more th...

Hear from Heloise Gold about her contribution of movement in the development of Deep Listening. She states: "When people are in a safe place beauty arises." Heloise Gold is a performing artist, dancer, choreographer and T’ai Chi/Qi Gong instructor. She was inducted into the Austin Arts Hall of Fame in 2015, for recognition of her extensive and continuous career as a performer and creator. Addition...

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota. He is an educator, musician and international speaker on peace and the global issues facing Native peoples. Tiokasin has a long history in Indigenous activism and advocacy. As a 15 year old he spoke at the United Nations in Lake Geneva, Switzerland. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of the inter...