Night Songs

Abstract This article's authors record, transcribe, and analyze Australian pied butcherbird songs much as a musicologist might study any human music. They also arrange some of these vocalizations for human musicians. Here, the authors detail a recent interspecies engagement entitled Night Songs. This multimedia concert cultivates audience engagement by striving to create as deep a listening experience as the authors' was in the field. The music partner for the authors' (re)compositions is a field recording, typically of the avian composer in question; this allows musicians to perform across a perceived divide and audiences to make direct comparisons of avian and human musicians. As songbird aesthetics emerge in the concert hall, they challenge hierarchies of creative power. Night Songs folds concepts of multispecies justice into storytelling. This rich, varied, and often familiar-sounding avian vocal culture prompts a rethink of species boundaries, prompting narratives of enchantment and connection to replace those of exceptionalism