Backyard Habitat Initiative Speaker: Lisa Rainsong, Gardening for a Concert

Gardening for a Concert: Creating Concert Halls for Nature’s Music from Parks to Your Backyard

From bird songs in the spring and summer to an evening chorus of crickets and katydids in later summer into fall, we can invite and welcome nature’s chorus into our yards and gardens. A large park may have a full-sized orchestra, but the intimacy of a chamber ensemble singing close to our homes is also very rewarding. If we know what the performers need to create their music, we can begin to provide a setting in which they will thrive.

Lisa Rainsong holds a Doctor of Music in composition from the Cleveland Institute of Music and has recently retired after 22 years on the music theory faculty at CIM. She teaches birdsong, insect song, and amphibian song classes across the state and makes field recordings of all these avian, orthopteran, and amphibian singers. In addition, she does field research throughout NE Ohio on crickets and katydids – research that is done primarily by ear. Her online field guide to NE Ohio’s singing insects at Listeningintoinsects.com includes her own recordings, photographs, and field research.  Her naturalist stories and field observations can be found on her blog at http://listeninginnature.blogspot.com and information on her programs is available at Listeninginnature.com.