A NationalSawdust+ evening weaving together sounds of deep nature, colorful stories from the field, and enthralling performances by the New Cicada Trio!
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Immerse yourself in Deep Nature Listening with philosopher/musician David Rothenberg, acoustician Benjamin Gottesman, and the New Cicada Trio. Featuring Iva Bittová (vocals and violin), Timothy Hill (overtone singing and guitar), and Rothenberg (clarinets and creatures), the Trio will perform works including the New York premiere of Rothenberg’s Eleven Paths to Animal Music (2025), a piece containing vignettes of natural environments recorded on the composer’s travels, from frogs in the Amazon to nightingales in the Camargue, from leafcutter ants in Costa Rica to a lake in Brandenburg. It encourages performers to listen closely to whole natural environments and find a way to play within them, and together, using the paths described in Rothenberg’s book, Nightingales in Berlin.
Gottesman, whose bioacoustic collaborations span Africa, Indonesia, and Hawaii, will share how listening at scale with acoustic monitoring is changing how we understand and conserve nature. This rich NS+ evening, programmed by Elena Park, is imbued by the legacy of the late Pauline Oliveros, whose deep listening methods have influenced artists across mediums for decades (and a member of the prior incarnation of New Cicada Trio).
The program is presented in partnership with Cornell University’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics.
About NationalSawdust+
Often topical and always imaginative, NationalSawdust+ is a lively performance and conversation series, curated by Elena Park, in which artists and thinkers share their passion for music and explore timely ideas, making surprising connections. Since October 2015, NS+ has been a home for intimate stories and unexpected artmaking, blurring boundaries between genres and disciplines. This season, NS+ For Nature continues to investigate the interplay and collision between the natural and human worlds, featuring musicians, artists, writers, and activists working to preserve and restore the environment. Recent programs have focused on ocean and riverkeeping, decarbonization and regeneration, and indigenous wisdom.
Tapping luminaries from theater, film and visual art, literature, science, technology, and beyond, NS+ guests have included Jad Abumrad, Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, Catie Cuan, Ava DuVernay, Gandini Juggling, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Vicky Takamine Holt, Susie Ibarra, Yo-Yo Ma, Domingo Morales, Nico Muhly, Ellen Reid, Isabella Rossellini, Carl Hancock Rux, Caroline Shaw, Gabriella Smith, Patti Smith, and esperanza spalding. The NS+ team includes Avery Leigh Draut and Ras Dia, with creative input from Peter Zuspan.
NationalSawdust+ For Nature is made possible by the generous support of the Wescustogo Foundation.
Please join us for other programs in our NS+ Series:
This is a seated performance. If you require accessibility accommodations, please email boxoffice@nationalsawdust.org.
DAVID ROTHENBERG
Musician and philosopher David Rothenberg wrote Why Birds Sing, Bug Music, Survival of the Beautiful and many other books, published in at least eleven languages. He has more than forty recordings out, including One Dark Night I Left My Silent House (ECM) and more recently, Just Leave It All Behind and Lost Steps. He has performed or recorded with Pauline Oliveros, Peter Gabriel, Ray Phiri, Suzanne Vega, Scanner, Elliott Sharp, Umru, Iva Bittová, and the Karnataka College of Percussion. In 2024 he won a Grammy Award as part of For the Birds, in the category of Best Boxed Set. Whale Music and Secret Sounds of Ponds are his latest books. Nightingales In Berlin and Eastern Anthems are his latest films. His piece Eleven Paths to Animal Music premiered at the Sammlung Hoffmann in Berlin in 2025. Rothenberg is Distinguished Professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
NEW CICADA TRIO
The New Cicada Trio is the collaborative project of Iva Bittová, David Rothenberg, and Timothy Hill. The broad range of sources of inspiration the three share makes for music that defies easy categorization, captured on two live albums, Live In Beacon (2017) and Breathe, Earth (2019) for Terra Nova Music. The Trio grew out of the Cicada Dream Band, a special collaborative project of Pauline Oliveros, Rothenberg, and Hill that marked the emergence of the 17-year cicada brood in 2013. After Oliveros’ death in 2016, Bittová joined the ensemble, christened the New Cicada Trio.
IVA BITTOVÁ
Czech violinist, singer, and solo performer Iva Bittová has lived in New York for more than a decade. A successful film and television actress in her native country, Bittová returned to her first love, music, in the 1980s. Her breakthrough came in 1987, when she and Pavel Fajt recorded their second album, Svatba (The Wedding), which was released internationally by Review Records. This attracted the attention of guitarist Fred Frith, who featured them in a documentary film on his life, Step Across the Border (1990), which gave them their first broad international exposure and a tour outside of Eastern Europe. Bittová has performed with a number of avant-garde musicians internationally, including Frith, Chris Cutler and Tom Cora, Bill Frisell, Mark Ribot, Hamid Drake, Evan Ziporyn, and Bobby McFerrin, and has given solo concerts across the world.
TIMOTHY HILL
Timothy Hill weaves a natural purity of voice with threads of otherworldly abstract sound, blending seamlessly into a style that defies description. Having performed with such diverse artists such as John Cage, Bill Frisell, Jeff Buckley, Allen Ginsberg, Odetta, Pete Seeger, Pauline Oliveros, and Madan Gopal Singh, Hill’s musical explorations span the genres of folk, jazz, world music, contemporary classical, and improvisation. As a member of David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir, Hill was a pioneer in the art of harmonic singing, prompting The New York Times critic Robert Palmer to praise him as “a virtuoso of the Tibetan chanting technique.” Hill’s wish to deepen his understanding of music brought him to the study of Indian classical music with Sheila Dhar and Pandit Vijay Kichlu, as well as music influenced by G.I. Gurdjieff with John Pentland and others. The broad scope and genre-crossing nature of his work has been deeply influenced by a unique musical friendship with pianist Keith Jarrett. An active teacher, Hill has been a visiting lecturer at the Bard College Conservatory Graduate Vocal Arts Program under artistic director Dawn Upshaw since its inception in 2006.
BENJAMIN L. GOTTESMAN
Benjamin L. Gottesman works at the intersection of sound, conservation, and community, as part of the Capacity Sharing team at Cornell University’s K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics. His work focuses on designing training programs, workshops, and open-access resources that make acoustic monitoring more accessible to conservation practitioners around the world.
He is a co-organizer of the Bioacoustics Equipment and Training (BEAT) program in Indonesia and Malaysia, an instructor for bioacoustics courses and workshops, and the host of BioacousTalks, a webinar series connecting researchers and practitioners through sound.
Gottesman has contributed to 17 peer-reviewed studies exploring how soundscapes reflect ecological change across different scales—from gun hunting and invasive urchins to solar eclipses and hurricanes. Alongside his scientific work, his soundscape installations, musical collaborations, and science communication have been featured by the Science Gallery, Mongabay, the History Channel, The Explorers Club, Science, and others.
For someone who has trouble sitting still, underwater sounds can hold him in place for hours.
ELENA PARK
Award-winning filmmaker, producer, and NationalSawdust+ curator Elena Park has moved freely through the worlds of arts, culture, and media throughout her colorful career. The daughter of Korean immigrants, she founded Lumahai Productions to embrace opportunities for artistic collaboration and social change with artists, thinkers, and communities as well as institutions, large and small.
Her first hour-long documentary, Eun Sun Kim: A Journey Into Lohengrin (2024), earned her a second regional Emmy directing nomination as well as a nod for outstanding arts/entertainment program, following multiple KQED broadcasts of the San Francisco Opera film. Visual Cavafy (2023), seen at NYC’s New Museum and abroad in Athens and Alexandria, showcased the talents of Taylor Mac, Julianne Moore, Caroline Shaw, and Carl Hancock Rux with Daniel Bernard Roumain, Bora Yoon, and Jeffrey Zeigler, among others.
Additional Director/Executive Producer credits: eight In Song short films, featuring artists including Pretty Yende and Jamie Barton; Cleveland Orchestra’s In Focus programs, conducted by Alan Gilbert and Jane Glover; Vân-Ánh Võ for Stanford Live; and Jake Heggie's Intonations for the Cabrillo Festival. For the Metropolitan Opera, she is Executive Producer of the Saturday radio broadcasts and was Supervising Producer for the first 140 shows in its worldwide Live in HD series. Selected roles: Curator for San Francisco Opera's Instigators; Supervising Producer for San Francisco Symphony's MTT25: An American Icon; Special Advisor for …(Iphigenia); Artistic Consultant for the Kennedy Center; Executive Producer for WNYC Radio; and Strategic Advisor for Cambodian Living Arts and Meyer Sound. TV/film credits: Bel Canto, Amazon's Mozart in the Jungle.