Annika Kahrs’s work explores sound and its cultural, communicative and social functions, stretching the boundaries of what can be considered music. Primarily working in video, sound and performance, she examines and unveils social and scientific constructs, often placing human-animal relations under the lens. In Playing to the Birds pianist Lion Hinnrichs performs Franz Liszt’s Legends No. 1: Saint Francis of Assisi’s Sermon to the Birds (1863) in the baroque-styled hall of Jenisch Haus in Hamburg. The audience is made up of domesticated songbirds who respond with chirps and trills to the composition that recalls birdsong. By playing a human interpretation of animal language back to the birds, Kahrs enacts a role reversal, inviting interruption or disruption. The piece highlights sound as a fundamental means of human-animal communication, and music as a language that has the power to shift and reimagine established roles and binaries, such as human and animal, performer and audience, sound and silence. Here, the gift of (bird)song, which we humans have the privilege of experiencing, is returned to them by means of human invention and creativity.