John Luther Adams: Tuning in the sound of a frozen world
Series: Echo Location: Soundings for New Music
From: John Diliberto
Length: 00:03:30
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Related Pieces
Piece Description
It was John Cage who suggested that music was always in the air, and John Luther Adams has been tapping that sound for over 30 years. His evocative, atmospheric and sometimes stormy compositions evoke his longtime home in Fairbanks, Alaska. We talk with the noted composer about his life and his permanent ambient installation, The Place Where You Go To Listen, where music is triggered by seismic, magnetic and cosmological events. Adams has also written a book about it, The Place Where You Go to Listen: In Search of an Ecology of Music
Broadcast History
WXPN and WITF
Transcript
:18
Imagine A place where music comes from all directions. IT changes according to time of day, geomagnetic activity, aurora activity, the path of the sun and moon through the sky and seismic shudder. And it runs 24/7, 365 days a year.
Musik
:08
THIS IS JOHN LUTHER ADAMS' INSTALLATION, THE PLACE WHERE WE GO TO LISTEN. THAT'S TRANSLATED FROM AN INUIT NAME.
:16
22:17
JLA: The name is Naalagiagvik which means more or less literally translated “The place where you go to listen,” It’s Inupiak name. The Inupiat are the northern Alaskan Inuit people.
:34
THE PLACE IS AN EXPANSIVE WORK HOUSED IN THE MUSEUM OF THE NORTH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA IN FAIRBANKS. BUT IT'S A RECENT EXAMPLE OF THE ECOLOGICAL MUSIC THAT JOHN LUTHER ADAMS HAS BEEN MAKING OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS. HIS COMPOSITIONS ARE DRAWN FROM THE ENVIRONMENT, MOSTLY ALASKA WHERE HE LIVES, OFTEN IN DAR...
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Timing and Cues
Incue: [sonar sound] + This is an Echo Location: Soundings for New Music.
Outcue: I’m John Diliberto and this has been an Echo Location, Soundings for New Music
