John Luther Adams, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who spent most of his career working out of Fairbanks, has a new CD that, in part, pays tribute to his adopted state. "The Wind in High Places" will be released by Cold Blue Music on Jan. 13.
The title cut is a suite of three pieces for string quartet with individual titles that reference Alaska places. The 20-minute set is played entirely on open bowed strings and their overtones. In other words, the players never touch the fingerboard. Adams likens this to a 16-stringed Aeolian harp, an instrument that is not directly played by a musician but uses natural wind to make music.
The first "Wind" piece is titled "Above Sunset Pass." That's probably the Sunset Pass in the Brooks Range, where Adams previously has taken such harps to record the sound of air as it moves through wild spaces. It consists of long, slow, breathy lines. "Maclaren Summit" has shorter bow strokes and a rhythm, though irregular, more suggestive to me of the bumpy, dirt Denali Highway that crosses the summit south of the Alaska Range rather than the viewpoint itself.
"Looking Toward Hope," the final piece in the set, again reverts to long, sustained notes but they have more of a mournful hymn quality; I'm reminded that Adams' dear friend, the late conductor Gordon Wright, had a cabin above Rainbow looking toward Hope across Turnagain Arm. Adams was a frequent visitor and among those who brought Wright's body down the mountain when the conductor died there in 2007.
By not letting the players finger the strings, Adams is working with a very limited palette, perhaps too limited for a longish piece. For all but the most patient listeners "Wind" may resemble a 20-minute recording of string players tuning their instruments, an random succession of overlapping open fourths and fifths.
Unless one is emphatically dedicated to aleotoric effects, even closely notated ones, I would recommend they start listening to this CD with "Canticles of the Sky." This is a set of four pieces compressing a day from sunrise to sunset, or sunset to sunrise, played by 48 cellos (their names are all listed in the cover notes). The first two "Canticles" are named for atmospheric phenomena associated with cold northern setting, "Sky with Four Suns" and "Sky with Four Moons." The third, "Sky with Nameless Colors" and "Sky with Endless Stars" evoke the clear space above deserts.
The "Canticles" are all of the same length, within six seconds of four minutes and 30 seconds. They all follow the same three-part pattern, a quiet set of still tones raising in a dense crescendo then returning to silence. Each part takes 90 seconds; think of a quartet of perfect bell curves. In this case the similarity is not boring, probably because Adams selects tones in combinations of shimmering beauty. What catches my breath every time I hear it, and I've been listening a lot for the past few days, is the climax of "Endless Stars." But lines have been building into a loud approximation of a major chord which, with a shift of one note down a half-step, turns the whole thing a different color. It's an old trick, but it never loses its poignant punch and, in this case, it's all the more powerful because it's unexpected. If I were trying to introduce someone to Adams' music for the first time, I would play this first, then the full set of "Canticles," and then try them on the "Wind" pieces.
The CD concludes with another desert tribute, "Dream of the Canyon Wren." Birds have been a recurring motif in Adams' music for maybe 40 years now. This common bird is famous for its trickling song, often described as a "cascade" of notes, and often tagged with a squawky, buzzing "call." Adams says the sound evokes "feelings of deep tranquility and longing." He repeats an imitation of the descending trill in something like a variation format.
The composer, who moved to New York about two years ago, is currently visiting the desert, working on a new piece, "Become Desert." We'll assume it has some connection to his Pulitzer-winning piece, "Become Ocean." Columbia University announced this week that he will be the next recipient of the William Schuman Award. The prize, named after the American composer best known for the "Dragnet" theme, comes with a $50,000 award. It will be presented at a tribute on Oct. 7 that will include the New York premiere of "In the White Silence" and other of his works.