Gordon Hempton

Gordon Hempton is the Sound Tracker ®, an acoustic ecologist and Emmy award–winning sound recordist. For more than 38 years he has provided professional audio services to musicians, galleries, museums, and media producers, including Microsoft, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Discovery, National Public Radio, and numerous other businesses and organizations. He has received recognition from the Charles A. Lindbergh Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rolex Awards for Enterprise. He studied botany and plant pathology at the University of Wisconsin. His sound portraits, which record quickly vanishing natural soundscapes, have been featured in People magazine and a national PBS television documentary, Vanishing Dawn Chorus, which earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement. Hempton is subject of a feature film, Soundtracker and co-author of One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet, (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2010). He is Founder of The One Square Inch of Silence Foundation, Quiet Planet® and Quiet Parks International. Hempton has now circled the globe three times in pursuit of nature’s music and produced more than 60 albums available on iTunes. He lectures widely on the importance of listening. He lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

Photo & Bio courtesy of Gordon Hempton.