Hildegard Westerkamp, Germany, 1946.


Hildegard Westerkamp emigrated to Canada in 1968 and after completing her music studies, she joined R. Murray Schafer and the World Soundscape Project (WSP) at Simon Frasier University (SFU). She is one of the founding members of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) and is still active with them.

Westerkamp creates electroacoustic music, sound walks, installations, and also mixes environmental sound with traditional instruments and poetry. As well as composing many works in many different approaches, Westerkamp has an extensive body of writing, most of which are freely available to the public, as well as hosting soundscape workshops and lectures internationally.

All the above information and much more, including a full list of works, can be found on her official website and purchases of her work can be made also.

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Photo: electrocd.com. (2003). Hildegard Westerkamp. Retrieved from http://res.electrocd.com/photo.hr/westerkamp_hi.5.jpg

I transform sound in order to highlight its original contours and meanings, similar to the manner in which a caricaturist sharpens the contours and our perceptions of a person's face.
Hildegard Westerkamp


Below is one of Westerkamp’s electroacoustic soundscape compositions Talking Rain (1998).

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Talking Rain takes the listener on a journey using sounds of water, rain, and birds and animals. Some of the sounds she uses in this work were collected in Lighthouse Park which is a wooded area of water near Vancouver.
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Photo and Video: #HildegardWesterkamp (2015). Talking Rain. [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZF88yrK5Gg