Bernie's an amazing guy. After his career in folk music, he became a pioneer in sound engineering (he had the second Moog synthesizer ever built)... wrote the musical score for many t.v. and movie projects (including Rosemary's Baby and Apocalypse Now)... then left music to get his doctorate in bio-acoustics, and became a leader in the acoustic study of marine mammals. That interest expanded to include the acoustic study of thousands of individual species (this man has a recording of ants, no kidding.) More importantly, he studies the acoustic fabric of entire ecosystems, and currently has the largest number of field recordings of natural sounds in existence. Much of what he has recorded has become extinct in the 20 years he has been capturing these sounds.

We met about 15 years ago when I was working on a communication and cognition project with bottlenosed dolphins near San Francisco. Bernie had been named the Scientific Director of a collaboration I was involed with. (We were attempting to coax a wayward humpback whale back thru the delta to the Golden Gate. It was Bernie's recordings of humpback feeding sounds that the whale ultimately responded to and followed out.)

We stayed in touch sporadically, and years later I invited Bernie to do a series of guest lectures at a Wildlife Museum where I worked. He and his beautiful wife Kat were so interested in the wildlife research projects my team was doing that they generously offered to donate support from the lecture series back to our work. This included a portion of sales from his amazing CD recordings of natural sounds.

When I moved the research projects to a private non-profit organization, Bernie became one of the founding Board of Directors. He now specialized in installing natural sound systems in wildlife parks, zoos and museums, for the benefit of the captive animals as well as the public.

Through the years I have been lucky to have his advice, friendship and support both professionally and personally. We don't talk music much when Bernie's over, that's a part of his life that's more a memory than a passion these days. But I have to say that, like you Rick (and probably many others) I'm involved with folk music today in large part because of Bernie.

A few years ago Bernie was sitting in my kitchen while I was cooking dinner, and he kept asking me questions about what inspired me-- what I really wished I could have more time to do. He knew I was working 60 hrs. a week in research and education and feeling burned out. The things he said that night about being happy and feeling fulfilled even if it means making radical changes had a big effect on me. I knew he was a master at re-inventing himself.

That conversation helped shape my decision to reorganize my life and make more room for music-- which led me to Toronto to Rick Fielding's dinner table, where I asked.... "Rick, do you know a fellow named Bernie Krause?"

World's round, ain't it?

pj

P.S. I highly recommend Bernie's autobiography "Into a Wild Sanctuary"... and his fascinating first book "Notes from the Wild" which comes with a CD. You can also visit Bernie's website at www.wildsanctuary.com