Jim Nollman is a composer of music for theatre, an internationally distinguished conceptual artist, and an environmental activist. He graduated from Tufts University

Tufts University

Tufts University is a private research university located in Medford/Somerville, near Boston, Massachusetts. It is organized into ten schools, including two undergraduate programs and eight graduate divisions, on four campuses in Massachusetts and on the eastern border of France...

 in 1969.

In 1973, he was commissioned to compose a Thanksgiving Day radio piece for a U.S. national network, and recorded himself singing children's songs with three hundred turkeys. He has recorded interspecies music with wolves, desert rats

Gerbil

A gerbil is a small mammal of the order Rodentia. Once known simply as "desert rats", the gerbil subfamily includes about 110 species of African, Indian, and Asian rodents, including sand rats and jirds, all of which are adapted to arid habitats...

, deer

Deer

Deer are the ruminant mammals forming the family Cervidae. Species in the Cervidae family include white-tailed deer, elk, moose, red deer, reindeer, fallow deer, roe deer and chital. Male deer of all species and female reindeer grow and shed new antlers each year...

, elk

Elk

The Elk is the large deer, also called Cervus canadensis or wapiti, of North America and eastern Asia.Elk may also refer to:Other antlered mammals:...

, whales, and dolphins. He has also released several albums on Folkways Records

Folkways Records

Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...

, including Playing Music with Animals: Interspecies Communication of Jim Nollman with 300 Turkeys, 12 Wolves and 20 Orcas.

He directed one of Greenpeace's

Greenpeace

Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...

 first overseas projects, at Iki Island

Iki Island

Iki Island is an island lying between the island of Kyūshū and the Tsushima islands in the Tsushima Strait, the eastern channel of the Korea Strait. It is currently part of Nagasaki Prefecture of Japan. The city of Iki is the centre of the local government. The island has three ports.The island’s...

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where fishermen were slaughtering dolphins to compensate for human overfishing.

Interspecies

He is the founder of Interspecies, which sponsors research on communicating with animals through music and art, and promotes a model for communion between species. Interspecies' best-known field project is a twenty-five-year study using live music to interact with the wild orca

Orca

The killer whale , commonly referred to as the orca, and less commonly as the blackfish, is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family. Killer whales are found in all oceans, from the frigid Arctic and Antarctic regions to tropical seas...

s who inhabit the west coast of Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. Nollman is currently directing a project in Arctic Russia to protect the last beluga whales in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

Publications

Jim Nollman is the author of five books, including The Man Who Talks to Whales (Sentient Publications, ISBN 0-9710786-2-9), originally published under the title Dolphin Dreamtime (Bantam Books, 1987) and Why We Garden (Sentient Publications, ISBN 1-59181-025-6). He has also written essays which are anthologized in several collections of nature writing. He is contributing editor of the largest whale site on the Internet, with 10,000 visitors a month.

See also

• Michael J. Cohen
• Mark Fischer
• Hardy Jones
  Hardy Jones
  Hardy Jones is a wildlife and conservation filmmaker. He began his career in radio at WNOE in New Orleans and has worked for United Press International, The Peruvian Times, and CBS News. He has been a television documentary producer since 1978 and has produced over 75 films for PBS, Discovery, TBS,...
  
  
• Andy Ridinger

External links

• Homepage: Sentient Publications, Boulder, CO (biography)
• Interspecies Homepage
• Interspecies Magazine Directory
• Nollman Discography on Folkways