Hildegard Westerkamp

Hildegard Westerkamp lectures on topics of listening, environmental sound and acoustic ecology and she conducts soundscape workshops internationally. By focusing the ears’ attention to details in the acoustic environment, her compositional work draws attention to the act of listening itself and to the inner, hidden spaces of the environment we inhabit.
Her music has been commissioned by CBC Radio, Canada Pavilion at Expo '86, Ars Electronica (Linz), Österreichischer Rundfunk, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien in Germany.... She received Honorable Mentions in competitions such as Prix Ars Electronica in Austria, Prix Italia, and the International Competition for Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, as well as a Recommendation for Broadcast from the International Music Council's 4th International Rostrum of Electroacoustic Music... Her articles have been published in Radio Rethink, Kunstforum, Musicworks, MusikTexte... For an extensive exploration into her compositional work see Andra McCartney’s Sounding Places: Situated Conversations through the Soundscape Work of Hildegard Westerkamp, York University, Toronto, 1999.
As part of Vancouver New Music’s yearly season she has coordinated and led Soundwalks for the last six years, which in turn has led to the creation of The Vancouver Soundwalk Collective
A founding member of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), and co-editor of its journal Soundscape, Westerkamp was a researcher for R. Murray Schafer's World Soundscape Project, and she has taught acoustic communication at Simon Fraser University with colleague Barry Truax.