A New York Times–bestselling author’s intricately conceived, “remarkably eloquent” response to Moby-Dick: a story of harmony between man and whale (The Washington Post). This unique adventure tale follows two characters: one a sonar officer aboard a sinking Russian nuclear submarine; the other a massive, aging sperm whale swimming nearby. As the young man spends what may be his last days with the ship’s lovely surgeon, he listens to the plaintive calls of the whales sounding—calls of compassion, fear, and anger at humankind’s attacks on his species. Little does he realize these fellow creatures may also provide his only hope of survival. Giving voice to these magnificent mammals, Hank Searls—who in addition to his work as a writer has also been a yachtsman, underwater photographer, and Navy flyer—taps into our ancient connection to the natural world in a fascinating, suspenseful, and provocative drama.

In Sounding Composition Steph Ceraso reimagines listening education to account for twenty-first century sonic practices and experiences. Sonic technologies such as audio editing platforms and music software allow students to control sound in ways that were not always possible for the average listener. While digital technologies have presented new opportunities for teaching listening in relation to composing, they also have resulted in a limited understanding of how sound works in the world at large. Ceraso offers an expansive approach to sonic pedagogy through the concept of multimodal listening—a practice that involves developing an awareness of how sound shapes and is shaped by different contexts, material objects, and bodily, multisensory experiences. Through a mix of case studies and pedagogical materials, she demonstrates how multimodal listening enables students to become more savvy consumers and producers of sound in relation to composing digital media, and in their everyday lives.

Sounding Together: Collaborative Perspectives on U.S. Music in the Twenty-21st Century is a multi-authored, collaboratively conceived book of essays that tackles key challenges facing scholars studying music of the United States in the early twenty-first century. This book encourages scholars in music circles and beyond to explore the intersections between social responsibility, community engagement, and academic practices through the simple act of working together. The book’s essays—written by a diverse and cross-generational group of scholars, performers, and practitioners—demonstrate how collaboration can harness complementary skills and nourish comparative boundary-crossing through interdisciplinary research. The chapters of the volume address issues of race, nationalism, mobility, cultural domination, and identity; as well as the crisis of the Trump era and the political power of music. Each contribution to the volume is written collaboratively by two scholars, bringing together contributors who represent a mix of career stages and positions. Through the practice of and reflection on collaboration, Sounding Together breaks out of long-established paradigms of solitude in humanities scholarship and works toward social justice in the study of music.

Berlin, Chicago, Kolkata - three modern cities, whose soundscapes are as different as they are similar. Historically and musically, all three cities bear witness to changing worlds, above all the diversity and multiculturalism that led to the rapid growth of urban centers from the Enlightenment to the present. It is this sound world of musical difference, which modernity subjected to auditory transformation, that is the subject of Sounding Cities. The chapters in this book draw the reader to the life of the city itself, to its streets and stages, transforming how we listen to the modern world. Philip V. Bohlman is Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in Jewish History in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago, and Honorary Professor at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover. Sebastian Klotz is Professor of Transcultural Musicology and Historical Anthropology of Music at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Lars-Christian Koch is Head of the Department of Ethnomusicology and the Berlin Phonogram Archive at the Museum of Ethnology in Berlin, Professor for Ethnomusicology at the University of Cologne, and HonoraryProfessor for Ethnomusicology at the University of the Arts in Berlin.

Sounds are a vital dimension of transcultural encounters in the early modern period. Using the concept of the soundwave as a vibratory, uncanny, and transformative force, Jennifer Linhart Wood examines how sounds of foreign otherness are experienced and interpreted in cross-cultural interactions around the globe. Many of these same sounds are staged in the sonic laboratory of the English theater: rattles were shaken at Whitehall Palace and in Brazil; bells jingled in an English masque and in the New World; the Dallam organ resounded at Topkapı Palace in Istanbul and at King’s College, Cambridge; and the drum thundered across India and throughout London theaters. This book offers a new way to conceptualize intercultural contact by arguing that sounds of otherness enmesh bodies and objects in assemblages formed by sonic events, calibrating foreign otherness with the familiar self on the same frequency of vibration.