Jim Nollman (born January 1947 in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

) is a composer of music for theatre, a

conceptual artist Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called instal ...

, and an

environmental activist The environmental movement (sometimes referred to as the ecology movement), also including conservation and green politics, is a diverse philosophical, social, and political movement for addressing environmental issues. Environmentalists advoc ...

. He graduated from

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

in 1969. In 1973, he composed a Thanksgiving Day radio piece and recorded himself singing children's songs with three hundred turkeys. He has recorded interspecies music with various other animals. He released several albums on

Folkways Records Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service ...

, including ''Playing Music with Animals: Interspecies Communication of Jim Nollman with 300 Turkeys, 12 Wolves and 20 Orcas.'' Nollman directed one of Greenpeace's first overseas projects, at

Iki Island , or the , is an archipelago in the Tsushima Strait, which is administered as the city of Iki in Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan. The islands have a total area of with a total population of 28,008. Only four (4) of the twenty-three (23) named islands ...

, Japan, where fishermen were slaughtering dolphins to compensate for human overfishing. In 1978, Nollman founded Interspecies, which sponsors artists' efforts to communicate with animals through music and art. Its best-known project is a twenty-five-year study using live music to interact with wild

orca The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only Extant taxon, extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black ...

s off the west coast of Canada.

Recordings

*1982 ''Playing Music With Animals'' (

) *1997 ''What The Dolphin Said'' (Beluga Records) *1999 ''Orca's Greatest Hits'' (Beluga Records) *2006 ''Belly of the Whale'' (Important Records) *2011 ''The New Old Time'' (Red Newt Records)

Publications

*1987 ''The Man Who Talks to Whales'' (Sentient Publications, ), originally published under the title ''Dolphin Dreamtime: Talking to the Animals'' (Bantam Books, 1985), *1987 ''Animal Dreaming: The Art of Interspecies Communication'' (Bantam, ) *1990 ''Spiritual Ecology: A Guide for Reconnecting with Nature'' (Bantam, ) *1991 ''Why We Garden: Cultivating A Sense of Place'' (Sentient Publications, , Henry Holt & Co., ) *1998 ''Not Talking to Balooga: Whales and Dolphins'' (Henry Holt & Co., ) *1999 ''The Charged Border: Where Whales and Humans Meet'' (Henry Holt & Co., ) *2002 ''The Man Who Talks To Whales: The Art of Interspecies Communications'' (Sentient Publications, ) *2002 ''The Beluga Café: My Strange Adventures with Art, Music and Whales in the Far North'' (Sierra Club Books, ) He has also written essays which are anthologized in several collections of

nature writing Nature writing is nonfiction or fiction prose or poetry about the natural environment. Nature writing encompasses a wide variety of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in w ...

. He is contributing editor of the interspecies.com whale site.

References

External links

Homepage:
Sentient Publications, Boulder, CO (biography)
Interspecies Homepage

Folkways Recordings by Jim Nollman {{DEFAULTSORT:Nollman, Jim 1947 births Living people American male composers 21st-century American composers American environmentalists Musicians from Boston Tufts University alumni 21st-century American male musicians

Recordings

Publications

See also

References

External links