Fungi are expert collaborators.
They explore their environments, directing their shared bodies towards food sources. With the right conditions, fungi can build complex webs that shuttle nutrients and information across biospheres. Fungi can also make themselves known by growing fruiting bodies: mushrooms. These bodies are sometimes delicious, sometimes dangerous, and always a point of fascination to humans across cultures and throughout history.
Mushroom Songs came to be thanks to vocalist Curtis Anderson’s fascination for fungi and his family’s collaborative spirit.
Commissioned by Curtis’s mother, Dianna Anderson, a pianist, collaborator and music educator, composed by his brother, Erik Anderson, composer, arranger and performer, and with text by his friend and fellow mycophile, Mya Temanson, Mushroom Songs celebrates the weird and wonderful world of fungi. It is a collaboration in every sense of the word.
Listen to Mushroom Songs by clicking the player above. Explore the song cycle further by watching interviews with Erik and Curtis below.
Stay tuned for Underground Noise, a special that explores the weird and wonderful world of fungi. Join host Mya Temanson on YourClassical MPR on Monday, February 2, at 9 p.m.
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