‘In our world, we hear everything but rarely get the opportunity to listen and engage,’ says Chris Watson, one of the world’s leading nature recordists and a long-time collaborator with David Attenborough. From a boyhood spent revealing the avian symphonies in the woods behind his home using a tape recorder, to a distinguished career unearthing never-before-heard audio vignettes of everything from vultures feeding on a zebra carcass, to blue whales swimming in the Sea of Cortez, Watson’s life has been a lesson in not just hearing, but truly listening to the world around us. As habitats vanish at an alarming pace due to global warming, his recordings are becoming more important than ever in capturing a planet in flux, and preserving the swan song of species that have since gone silent.

“What sound does is fire our imaginations in quite a unique way; it defies any two dimensional visual image and it burns - it is very visceral - and it burns directly into our hearts and imaginations. That's how powerful sound is.”