It was March of this year when I first heard from Amanda Belantera, who had begun her initial search for a New York City home for Kinokophonography Night. Amanda, along with the Kinokophone Collective, has produced Kinokophonography events throughout the UK and in Japan. Kinokophone organized the event as a place for recordists, phonographers, and listeners to gather and share in a night of sounds from all over the world. (Some favorites of the past have included a snail eating a peach, and the juxtaposition of underground tree roots vs. above-ground trunk, branches and leaves reacting to strong wind.)(!)

Amanda proposed this collaboration at a time when R&H was brainstorming about public listening program possibilities. I had hoped for some kind of "Sit and Listen" themed programs, where we would all quite actually gather, sit, and listen to recordings from the Collection. Kinokophonography Night consists of two forty-five minute listening periods. One session includes general, interesting submissions, while the other session is curated on a theme.

One of the most attractive aspects of this particular event is the way it offers our local community the chance to be heard alongside world-renowned sound artists. I am hoping that, in the next few weeks, as many of you as possible will either step out into the world to create new recordings or dust off your old tapes/mine those hard drives for sounds you've collected over the years. The call for recordings is open until December 31. Whether done with professional equipment or captured on the fly by your cell phone, all sounds are welcome! The more local sounds the better; the themed portion of the listening event will be devoted to Community and the many ways we can all interpret and capture it.

On May 15th, we hope you will join Kinokophone here at the Library for the Performing Arts for a recording workshop designed to empower the New York public to aurally engage with their surroundings while learning proper recording techniques. Hopefully, some of the new recordists will be heard during our next Kinokophonography event in the Fall.

Please join us on Thursday, February 6 from 6:30 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. in the Bruno Walter Auditorium at the New York Public Library for Performing Arts (Enter at 111 Amsterdam Avenue) to welcome Kinokophone to NYPL.

In the meantime, I encourage you to record, sit, and listen.