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Listening Report: John Luther Adams

John Luther Adams is an American composer who once worked as an environmental activist. He sees the weather as metaphor which cannot be predicted. In Alaska he wanted to take into account language of the Inuit people by translating the natural experience into a spiritual one. He took natural phenomena and put it into sound due to him wanting to create a musical echo system. The choice to full focus on music was made by Adams because he had “the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world“ (Source 1).

 

            The work of Adams The place were you go to listen (2006) is a “permanent sound-and-light installation at the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska“ (Abstract Kinnear) which “resonates strongly with the geography and ecology of the composer's place of residence. The audiovisual experience is generated through a computer program that translates real-time data streams from geophysical events into sound and colour signals.“ The piece begins with the sounds of rain and drums. The drums remind me of thunder which is probably intended by the composer. The drums repeat every few seconds and a woman’s voice is added. The sound of the drum and the soft voice are contradictory which draws me under a spell and it works as a kind of hypnotization. This effect is truly calming to me. When the voice disappears the sound of thunder continues until a sound starts which reminds me of electro magnet fields, probably they are being transferred into sound.

 

 

 

 

Sources:

1.https://www.johnlutheradams.net/biography/

 

2. Adams, John Luther. The Place Where You Go To Listen, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBNc9dERnXw

 

3. Kinnear, Tyler. “Voicing Nature in John Luther Adams's The Place Where You Go to Listen.”Organised Sound, vol. 17, no. 3, 2012, pp. 230–239., doi:10.1017/S1355771811000434.

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