John Luther Adams, “at the still point,” the place we began (Cold Blue 2009)
I was having trouble starting this review with a sentence that did not originate with some form of the verb “to be.” “There is in the place we began…” “It is hard to situate…” And perhaps that is (forgive me) instructive. The four pieces that comprise this work are very much a state of being, or a state of experience within our being that cannot be rendered effortlessly in words. I’ve written about this before, especially in relation to the works of Richard Skelton. The art can and should have its own landscape. The artist seeds the garden, and then the plants somehow tend themselves.
Not to be confused (though he often is) with the California composer John Adams (Nixon in China, Harmonielehre, On the Transmigration of Souls), John Luther Adams has created a body of work that incorporates the sounds and silences of his adopted Alaska. Quite literally, as he has recorded numerous soundscapes in the Alaskan wilderness and used them as building blocks in his compositions. the place we began is built from audio fragments that Adams collected circa the early 1970s and reappropriated into completely new works.
He writes: “Last summer in my studio I discovered several boxes of reel-to-reel tapes that I’d recorded in the early 1970s. Using those ‘found objects,’ I sculpted these new soundscapes from fragments of my past. The tape that got me started was labeled ‘Scrap. Unknown.’ When I listened to it, I could neither tell which direction was forward nor determine its proper playback speed. In both directions and at high and low speeds the sounds was intriguing. After trying it all four ways, I began to superimpose tracks. Then I began exploring the other found tapes.”
“at the still point” is a “tempo canon that sustains the relationships 13/14/15/16 throughout. The piece is made primarily from two tapes I recorded in 1974 on my Fender Rhodes electric piano.” So while it may appear on the surface a bit of neat flowing ambience, “at the still point” is in fact a thoroughly composed piece, built rigorously to achieve Adams’s compositional, and emotional, effect.
This work, for one thing (and it is no small thing), is undeniably beautiful. These four electro-acoustic works are each quite distinct in flavor and yet form a coherent unit, a music that is visual and evocative. Adams has done several installation pieces around visual arts ideas, perhaps the most expansive being “The Place Where You Go to Listen” covered by Alex Ross in the New Yorker. The four works in the place we began are equally cinematic and visual, echoing Alex Ross’s comparison of Adams’s music to the effect of the aurora borealis.
As to the seeming insistence of the verb “to be,” it seems apt. These works offer an alternative to pressure and stress, for one thing, that makes for a better state of being. While tempting to situate these works in a broader framework of modern composition and influence, it is preferable to let them act as their own reason for being. And therefore, be.
John Luther Adam’s official site
Alex Ross on JLA in the New Yorker
