An orchestra of up to 16 elephants who perform at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center in Lampang, Northern Thailand. I cofounded the TEO in 2000 with Richard Lair, a conservationist who lives in Lampang and is the world's foremost specialist in the care, upkeep, and status of the Asian elephant.

The TEO recording sessions bring public awareness to the first center devoted to elephant conservation and give the elephants a pleasant activity to enjoy - and as you will hear, to make some very good music. And one has the chance to hang out with the elephants.

The orchestra per se very rarely performs in public, but four of the same elephants perform music for a few minutes a day at the Conservation Center, including a bit of solo free improvisation on a giant marimba.

How the Orchestra Began

This TEO was inspired by painters Komar & Melamid who collaborated with animals for years, starting with a dog in the 70’s in Russia. They started painting with elephants at the Thai Elephant Conservation Center, which suggested to me and Richard, one of the Center’s directors, to see if elephants could play music, particularly as elephants like to listen to music.

We built over 22 giant instruments, mostly of steel, but also including commercial harmonicas and a variety of other instruments that can be played by the elephants. Many of the instruments are based on those used in the local music traditions.

Learn more about the Thai Elephant Orchestra

Songbirds

Songbirds sing for pleasure among other reasons: will they play musical instruments too?

At least for the zebra finch, I found that songbirds will play instruments if they are provided with an ergonomic means to trigger and if they like the sound - they like brass instruments and hate distorted rock guitar.

This system uses triggers on levers they peck with their beaks. They will play hundreds of times a day: there was no training or other reward than hearing the music. These birds were caged, and would sometimes play intensively for hours and then take breaks for hours before going back to it.

I suspect some songbirds will play instruments in the wild, if the instruments were very simple for them, such as landing on rope triggers. Hard to try where I live except with English sparrows, but possible for someone living in the country....

Listen to audio samples

Swamp Music

Recordings of crickets, fish, frogs, and night birds from Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi, arranged in a fugue structure, emulating a night walk in the swamp.

I used to live in a swamp outside of Gainesville, Florida, with an enormous alligator in the backyard (and a three-legged dog).

Fruit Flies on Love and Drugs

Recordings of the common fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, courtesy of the neuroscientist Jay Hirsh at the University of Virginia.

Listen to audio samples

The late physicist and neuroscientist Gordon Shaw and I began to coach pygmy chimps at the San Diego Zoo to play simple instruments: this was in part the idea of "enriching" their lives in the zoo environment.

We didn't have a chance to record what they played, which was mostly waving handbells. The matriarch, Lana, loved listening to me playing for her and curled up on my leg for more than an hour, but I think that was for social reasons, not simply for the sound.

Gordon passed away after a short illness in April, 2005. He was the promulgator of "the Mozart effect", which uses music to help children with abstract thinking, and his MIND Institute continues their teaching program.