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John Luther Adams report. Anna Trubnikova

John Luther Adams seems to be out of the traditional genre and style of music – he’s not a minimalist, although his music tends to be close to minimal. He describes his style as his own a unique, refusing to be called a representative of one single direction. And I may say he’s got the right to do so: his style appears to be outstanding and combining a few genres one can name – if needed.

One of the most impressive pieces of John Adams for me is Clouds of Forgetting. It is a very complex and multidimensional piece, wonderful by both the sound and structure. It has so many interesting transitions between parts of the piece and so many unexpected flows. It is one piece that I would call magical as the nature is itself, as Adams is a composer who finds inspiration mainly in nature. The bells (?) in the piece are to my view perfect for expressing how it rains, creating a ringing melody of raindrops forming in the clouds, the place where the name of the piece suggests it takes place. The structure of Clouds of forgetting can be called intuitive, unpredictable and almost random. Another significant observation that one might not notice at first while listening to Adams’s music is that there is something sacramental to it, expressed by higher pitches of the melody by chime of the bells. The pieces bring us back to Earth, to what really matters and to our roots. The  piece Clouds of forgetting is like a living forest itself, with all the sounds of the trees, water, light and animals in the environment.

Become Ocean is similar to Clouds of forgetting, very spiritual, mysterious and deep, just like the ocean itself. The scale of the music piece amazes by its depth and multilayer structure. It is more meditative compared to Clouds of forgetting in my opinion, one can easily doze off into textured dreamy waves of the water and foamy peaks of the tidal flow. There’s light and heavy thick darkness of the water in the sound, the instrument played here by the composer is the ocean, not the regular ones. It sounds as if he plays the water directly, as Alvin Lucier plays with the sound of teapot in his pieces, but without any intermediaries. He’s united with the nature and is part of it and exposes the beauty of places as if they could speak up on their own.
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