It's to the best of our knowledge.

When's the last time you listened to your city?

Not just the good stuff, the whole noisy, messy cacophony.

The rumbling, and people talking, you know, little bits of conversations.

Usually people are trying to block out the noise of the city, but it's actually interesting if you turn it up.

I'm Anne Strange Champs.

This hour, musician David Rothenberg joins us for a multi-city, multi-continent soundwalk.

We'll find an orchestra in a car garage.

It's almost like the city itself is playing music or singing.

Yeah. It's almost like the city itself is playing music or singing. And we'll hear what happens when we refuse to listen.

This need to silence that sound led to him deciding to shoot into the Jeep.

So, open your ears, open your heart, listen to your city.

Wisconsin Public Radio.

It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strain Champs.

When was the last time you listened, really listened, to your city?

I think I started exploring the city by sound because it's something that many people talked about for years,

and I avoided doing it for years.

David Rothenberg is a composer who's famous

for recording and playing music with whales, birds, insects, but recently he's turned his attention

to a different kind of sound, cities. Like his own, New York.

So the plan was to get a bunch of people together, give them all audio recorders with headphones and microphones and crank up the sound, make the city louder.

I picked something really interesting and compact that I knew would sound interesting, this part of northern Manhattan.

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