I wanted to call attention to John Luther Adams today. It may have escaped your notice that he won a Pulitzer Prize for Music yesterday for his composition, “Become Ocean.” (sample here). It certainly escaped my notice.
I had a faculty member come to my door talking about how he spoke to Adams today and how he has known the composer for awhile and Adams had played his music on his radio station in Alaska. I think the faculty member assumed I knew about the Pulitzer, which I didn’t. I thought he was just going on about a buddy of his.
It was only after the faculty member left my office and I Googled Adams’ name on a lark, that I discovered he was a big deal. Adams’ work was much more accessible than the faculty member’s comments lead me to believe. (Especially in the context of some of the music samples he has given me in the past.)
As I looked around for some other samples of Adams’ work, I found this video of his “Inuksuit” at Park Avenue Armory which really excited me. As Alex Ross mentions in his article on the performance, Adams never intended for the work to be performed indoors, but saw a lot of possibility in the cavernous armory. He set up 76 musicians throughout the drill field, catwalks and adjoining rooms and encouraged the audience of 1300 to wander among and with them.
What excited me was that we so often talk about getting orchestral music out of the concert hall and here was a piece that was never envisioned to be indoors.
There was the recent question of whether American orchestras are ignoring American music. Between Adams’ Pulitzer win and his willingness to have his music played under the sky, there is incentive to pay some attention.
Concerts like this will generate a clear dividing line between those who yearn to listen in acoustically perfect halls and those who don’t. Symphonic and chamber music wasn’t written for warehouse spaces so I don’t advocate trying to impose the “Inuksuit” format on them.
“Inuksuit” seemed to be much more about experiencing the music than listening to it. I would guess concerns about coughing, opening cellophane candy wrappers and cellphones ringing in the middle of the show never emerged. For all the people who were up and walking around, it seemed like at any one time the majority actually sat/laid quietly and let it all wash over them. And the audience definitely did experience and respond. If you look at the last 2 minutes of the video, as the sound produced decreases, so does the physical movement in the room and nearly everyone stands still.
I don’t think anything about this negates the value and need for quiet moments in music found in conventional orchestral pieces. Listening to “Become Ocean,” Adams definitely has an appreciation of silence, as you might expect of a composer who takes nature as his inspiration.
In fact, there seems to be an impulse for “Become Ocean” to escape the room.
From his NPR interview it almost sounds like the walls are a hindrance (my emphasis):
“It’s scored for large symphony orchestra, a bunch of percussionists, a large string section, full woodwinds and brass and even four — count them, four — harps. The orchestra is deployed as three separate ensembles. It’s really a piece for three orchestras. The different instrumental choirs are separated as widely as possible in the performance space.”