"Seventy percent of the earth is water in all its forms, from the heat vents deep in the Mariana Trench, to the last of the snows on Kilimanjaro. From the killer droughts in Africa to the rising seas taking out villages in Alaska and the Pacific south sea islands." - Bernie Krause

Saxophonist Michael Straus and five composer/sound artists collaborate in 70.8%, a performance project fusing saxophones with our underwater environment. Armed with an arsenal of field recording gear and hydrophones, these five individuals dance the fine line between art and science. Performances will begin in the Spring of 2012, and take place throughout the Gulf South, Alaska, Maine, California, the Netherlands and Norway.

Matthew Burtner - saxophone + field recordings from the Caribbean Sea
Cheryl E. Leonard - alto saxophone + home built water organ
Douglas Quin - saxophone + field recordings from the Arctic and Antarctic
Erik DeLuca - saxophone quartet + field recordings from Maine's Acadia National Park
Ulrich Krieger - baritone saxophone + live amplified scuba diver

Now booking concerts for Spring 2012 and beyond. More information including sample media, biographies and website links are available below. 70.8% is a supporter of Ear to the Earth.

Please consider making a tax-deductible donation to 70.8%.

Douglas Quin is a sound designer, naturalist, public radio commentator, educator and music composer. For over 20 years, Quin has traveled widely documenting the natural soundscape—from Antarctic ice to Arctic tundra and from African savannah to Amazon rainforest. His recordings of endangered and disappearing habitats represent one of the most unique and extensive collections anywhere. Among other projects, Quin recently created the sound design for and mixed Werner Herzog's Academy Award nominated film, Encounters At the End of the World. He contributed to the sound design for Spore, a game from Maxis/Electronic Arts and has also worked on exhibits for the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, American Museum of Natural History and the Polish Academy of Sciences, among others.

He is currently involved as a bioacoustics researcher with the Kagu Recovery Plan and Conservation Research New Caledonia in conservation efforts to protect the critically endangered kagu bird. Quin recently collaborated with clarinetist F. Gerard Errante on his recent CD release, Delicate Balance, and is composing a new work for the acclaimed Kronos Quartet featuring soundscapes and interactive electronics using the K-Bow—a new bow controller by instrument builder, Keith McMillen.

Quin received his BA in Art from Oberlin College, where he studied electronic music with Dary John Mizelle. He earned an MFA in Sculpture and Media Arts from the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, where he studied music composition with T. J. Anderson and sound art with Richard Lerman. He received his PhD in Acoustic Ecology from the Union Institute. His work has been performed at numerous festivals and venues including Merkin Hall, The Kitchen, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and Spoleto Festival USA. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants including the Ars Acustica International prize, Meet the Composer, multiple fellowships in music composition from the National Endowment for the Arts, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Maryland State Arts Council, and support from the National Science Foundation.

Quin is an Associate Professor in the Television, Radio and Film Department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.

Excerpt from Fathom by Douglas Quin
underwater soundscape from the Arctic and Antarctic


Fathom brings together four extended underwater soundscapes - two each from the Arctic and Antarctic. The recordings have been gathered over a period of 15 years, capturing an extraordinary palette of sonic voices, events, spaces, and textures. To the human ear, these soundscapes are haunting and otherworldly; yet they are very music of this world - out of earreach.

Matthew Burtner's music has been described by The Wire as "some of the most eerily effective electroacoustic music I've heard," and 21st Century Music writes "There is a horror and beauty in this music that is most impressive." First prize winner in the Musica Nova International Electroacoustic Music Competition, his music has also received honors and awards from Bourges, Gaudeamus, Darmstadt, Prix d’Ete, Meet the Composer, ASCAP, Luigi Russolo, American Music Center, Hultgren Biennial, and others. His music has been commissioned for leading ensembles and festivals in Europe and the US such as Spectri Sonori (US), Musik i Nordland (Norway), Cross Sound (Alaska), Musikene (Spain), Augsburg Kulturburo der Stadt (Germany), Heidelberg Ministerium of Arts/ Trio Ascolto (Germany), Spiza (Greece) and NOISE (US) among others. He conducted long-term residencies as Invited Researcher at IRCAM/Centre Pompidou (France), and Composer-in-Residence at Musikene (Spain), Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), Cite International des Arts (France), Simon Fraser University (Canada), and the IUA/Phonos Institute (Spain). His work in interactive media composition and research has been awarded significant fellowship support by organizations including the T+TI Fellowship of UVA (2007/2008), the Howard Foundation Fellowship of Brown University (2008/2009), The Stanford University GRO, The Buckner Clay Endowment of UVA (2009/2010) and the Center for 21st Century Studies Provost Fellowship of the University of Wisconsin (2010/2011).

Burtner's instrumental and electroacoustic music explores ecoacoustics, interactive media, and extended rhythmic and noise-based musical systems. Among published recordings for DACO (Germany), The WIRE (UK), MIT Press (US), Innova (US), Centaur (US), EcoSono (US) and Euridice (Norway), his music appears on three critically acclaimed solo recordings. His 2008 “Signal Ruins” sound art-works DVD was described by London’s Further Noise as "a dissonant, ecstatic anti-chorus of metallic shrieking, stresses, and crackle… cementing this audio-visual project as a most trenchant experience in ritual."

Burtner is an Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Virginia where he is Director of the Interactive Media Research Group (IMRG) and Associate Director of the VCCM Computer Music Center. Originally from Alaska, he studied philosophy, composition, saxophone and computer music at St. Johns College, Tulane University (BFA 1993), Iannis Xenakis's UPIC Studios, the Peabody Institute of JHU (MM 1997), and Stanford University's CCRMA (DMA 2002). At Stanford he studied and worked closely with Max Mathews, Jonathan Harvey, Brian Ferneyhough and Jon Berger. Burtner spent his early childhood in a small village on the Arctic Ocean of Alaska, and on fishing boats on Alaska's Southwest coast. His earliest acoustic memories include the sound of wind, and of storms on the ocean. He has traveled extensively and lived in Australia, Santa Fe, New Orleans, Paris, Barcelona and Palo Alto.

Since 1999 Burtner has developed the Metasaxophone, a project involving imbedded computer systems and augmented performance. Paul Wagner of the Saxophone Journal has described the metasaxophone as "a new instrument with new and exciting textures for the saxophone world... the music is as mysterios and fascinating as the instrument itself," and Scram Magazine writes "If Burtner's saxes were flesh, they’d be bionic: wired for feedback loops and computerized programs...Burtner explores the outer edges of live performance potential."

Burtner directs MICE (Mobile Interactive Computer Ensemble), an experimental sonic arts ensemble employing novel human-computer interaction, network technologies and interactive acoustics. MICE has performed in venues such as Symphony Space in New York City, the Delaware Center for the Arts, Technosonics Festival, club MUSE, Live Arts Theatre, the University of Washington Bothell, Charlottesville's Fringe Festival, the Digitalis Under the Stars Festival, UVA's Old Cabell Hall, and the Most Significant Bytes Festival. In 2008 with grant assistance from UVA's T+TI program MICE expanded into an orchestral scale of 200 performers. During the 2009 MICE World Tour, sponsored by Semester at Sea, MICE performed in the Atlantic Ocean, Equatorial Gabon, Namibia, South Africa, the Indian Ocean, India, Singapore, Thailand, China, Japan, the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii and Panama.

Excerpt from Kanja by Matthew Burtner
underwater in the middle of the Indian Ocean


The word "Kanja" is Sanskrit for "water-born". In the East African Kikuyu language is also means "from outside". The composition was created for a performance in the middle of the Indian Ocean as MICE travelled from Mauritius to India. The ensemble performs percussion under the ocean water in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Hydrophones pick up the sound of the performers and send it to computers for processing.

Glass shards and pinecones, glaciers, boxspring mattresses, a flock of accordions, circular saw blades, viola, the erhu, hyenas and whales and elk, Cheryl E. Leonard's music finds its raw materials just about anywhere. From these diverse sources come works that embrace the spectrum of musical possibilities: improvised to composed, acoustic to electronic, diaphanous to bombastic, notes to noise. Many of Leonard’s works explore subtle textures and intricacies in sounds not generally considered musical. These investigations often include the creation of instruments, primarily from found natural materials. Her interests include: developing site-specific compositions and instruments, guerrilla performance, and collaborating across artistic disciplines.

Cheryl holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MA from Mills College, both in music composition. She studied composition and electronic music with Alvin Curran, Chris Brown, George Lewis, Frederic Rzewski, Laeticia Sonami, Salvatore Maccia, and Alan Bonde; and performance art with Moira Roth, Carole E. Schneemann, and Betsy Damon.

Leonard’s music has been performed at Sushi Gallery, Highways, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Exploratorium, the San Francisco Butoh Festival, the Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, SoundCulture 96, and more. Her work with natural object instruments has been featured on KQED TV's local arts show Spark, the Hallmark Network's New Morning Show and CBS's Evening Magazine, as well as in Tim Perkis's documentary film Noisy People. She is the recipient of grants from the National Science Foundation's Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and the American Composer's Forum. She has been awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Engine 27, Villa Montalvo, and The Lab (with RK Corral), and has been honored in New Langton Art's Bay Area Awards Show. Leonard has written commissioned works for Kronos Quartet and the Illuminated Corridor. Recordings of her music are available from Nexmap, Ubuibi, Great Hoary Marmot Music, Pax Recordings, Unusual Animals, Apraxia Records, 23 Five Inc, Old Gold Records and The Lab.

Cheryl's many collaborations with artists from other disciplines include: composing the soundtrack for Rajendra Serber's Space Western film Good Guy Bad Guy, three projects (Fable, Good Guy Bad Guy, Eenie Macy and the Ten Step Program) with the interdisciplinary ensemble RK Corral, the creation of an interactive sculpture, The Making Smashing Machine, with Swedish sculptor Anna Hallin; and numerous works for dance and video. She has created sounds for several exhibits at the Monterey Bay Aquarium and, over the past two decades, has played in several experimental ensembles and noise bands, touring Japan, Canada, and the U.S. in the process. These days, she often performs with Big City Orchestra.

In addition to her musical endeavours Leonard is a climber and mountaineer, studies aikido and collects pinecones with handles.

Excerpt from Tenchi by Cheryl E. Leonard
dripping/pouring water and blown air bubbles in water

Erik DeLuca explores sound, usually through collaboration with our natural environment, and is an aspiring community art organizer. He holds degrees from the University of North Florida and Florida International University and is currently pursuing a PhD in Composition and Computer Technologies at the University of Virginia. In 2010, Erik served as Artist-In-Residence at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve in Alaska, and Acadia National Park in Maine. In Times of global warming and war, Erik's work reinforces how magnificent our Earth is - sound is the perfect means and the composer is the perfect bridge.

Excerpt from In by Erik DeLuca
an underwater sound composition


"A combination of Jacques Cousteau, Captain Nemo, Poseidon as a young man, or perhaps a human incarnation of a dolphin-poet, composer Erik DeLuca explores the mysteries of sounds as they exist and propagate underwater. It feels as if the flows and currents in the shallow depths of the Florida Keys and surrounding waters carry the musical sounds to him. Through the magic of recording he reveals underwater life as we have never heard it before and invites us to experience it vividly with him. As a companion to Pauline Oliveros and Stuart Dempsters Deep Listening underground performances, DeLuca's In is a vast symphonic work, consisting of numerous samples of natural and man-made sound events, woven into a gorgeous musical tapestry." - Alvin Lucier

"In reveals fascinating worlds of underwater life forms and related non-living phenomena, weaving them into a rich fabric of auditory data. These are intrinsically mysterious worlds, largely as remote from human experience or signification as the ultima thule revealed through the mirrors of our most powerful telescopes. Erik DeLuca not only allows us to experience these hidden worlds beyond the physical reach of our sensory perception, he does so with impeccable respect for the diverse things that share our multiverse." - David Dunn

Ulrich Krieger is a composer, performer, improviser and experimental rock musician. His main instruments are saxophones, clarinets, didjeridu and electronics. He calls his style of playing ‘acoustic electronics’, using sounds, that appear to be electronic, but are produced on acoustic instruments and then sometimes electronically treated, blurring the borders between the fields. Krieger transcribed Lou Reed's (in)famous Metal Machine Music for chamber ensemble and works with groups like Text of Light (with Lee Ranaldo) and zerfall–gebiete (with Thomas Koner) in the nirvana between experimental rock, ambient and contemporary composition.

Born 1962, in Freiburg, Germany, he lived in Berlin from 1983-2007 with longer residencies in the USA and Italy from 1991-97. In September 2007 he moved to California, where he is professor for composition and experimental sound practice at the 'California Institute for the Arts'. He studied classical saxophone, composition, electronic music and musicology at the Manhattan School of Music (NYC), the Universität der Künste (Berlin) and the Freie Universität (Berlin), as well as pursuing independent studies and research in the didjeridu and Australian Aboriginal music and culture. Krieger has worked with Lou Reed, Lee Ranaldo, Phill Niblock, David First, Thomas Köner, Alan Licht, Michiko Hirayama, Witold Szalonek, Mario Bertoncini, Miriam Marbe, Seth Josel, Zbigniew Karkowski, Merzbow, zeitkratzer and many others performing in Europe, North-America, Asia and Australia.

His works are being performed by the California EAR Unit, zeitkratzer, KontraTrio, Soldier String Quartet, Wandelweiser Ensemble, and many others. Krieger received grants from the German DAAD program, the Darmstadter Summer Courses for New Music, the city of Berlin and many others and was a Composer-In-Residence at Villa Aurora (Los Angeles), Villa Serpentara (Rome), German Research Centre Venice (Italy), University of East Anglia (England), the City of Bologna (Italy) and the Music Centre North Queensland (Australia). He has released over 50 CDs of his original compositions, improvisations, with his groups and as a collaborator with many musicians.