On the occasion of the 2014 centenary of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters in partnership with the UW-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology explored the sobering story of the passenger pigeon and what it can tell us about the ongoing extinction crisis and our relationship with other species.

On November 2, 2014, the University of Wisconsin, Madison Symphony Orchestra performed Anthony Philip Heinrich's The Columbiad.

Heinrich was inspired by witnessing vast flocks of passenger pigeons in 1831. Known in his day as “the log cabin composer” and “the Beethoven of America,” Anthony Philip Heinrich is the only important composer of the early nineteenth century to have experienced the North American frontier as he did. He saw Niagara Falls, he encountered Native Americans and slave musicians, and he witnessed the astonishing migration of giant flocks of passenger pigeons.    

The Columbiad, which created a sensation at its premiere in Prague in 1858, had not been performed in over 150 years.

For more information about the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters, please visit: http://www.wisconsinacademy.org/events

For more about the passenger pigeon’s story, please visit: www.passengerpigeon.org