On this very cold January day, we look at the first of three shows devoted to the extraordinary, unique music of American composer John Luther Adams. John Luther Adams has spent most of his adult life living in rural Alaska and the rugged, vast, and frozen landscapes of the Arctic have been a central inspiration to him and are almost magically captured in this work of aching beauty and spiritual stillness. In the White Silence was composed in 1998 as a memorial to his mother.
In Adams' own words:
White is not the absence of color: It is the fullness of light.
Silence is not the absence of sounds. It is the presence of stillness.
As the Inuit have known for centuries and as the painters from Malevich to Ryman have shown us more recently, whiteness embraces many hues, textures, and nuances.
As John Cage reminded us, silence does not literally exist. Still, in a world going deaf with human noise, silence endures as a deep and resonant metaphor.
In his Poetics of Music Stravinsky speaks of music as a form of philosophical speculation. But Music can also be a form of contemplation: the sensual reaching for the spiritual.
I aspire to music that is both rigorous in thought and sensuous in sound.
I've long been obsessed with the notion of music as place and place as music. The treeless windswept expanses of the Arctic are enduring creative touchstones for my work and In the White Silence is an attempt to evoke an enveloping musical presence equivalent to that of a vast tundra landscape.
But I want to go beyond the landscape painting with tones, beyond language, metaphor and the extra-musical image. I want to leave the composition, the "piece" of music, for the wholeness of music.
I no longer want to be outside the music, listening to it as an object apart. I want to inhabit the music, to be fully present and listening in that immeasurable space that Malevich called "a desert of pure feeling".
--John Luther Adams
This show is dedicated to Mark Valcour.
| In the White Silence John Luther Adams/The Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble, Tim Weiss - In the White Silence - New World Records |
| Mehriban Olaq Kronos Quartet with the Alim Qasimov Ensemble - Music of Central Asia vol. 8 Rainbow - Smithsonian Folkways |
| Falak Badakhshan Ensemble - Music of Central Asia vol. 5 Song and Dance from the Pamir Mountains - Smithsonian Folkways |
| Kerbez Nurak Abdirakhmanov - Shuudungut's Road - Frequency Glide Enterprises |
| Alymkan Baktybek Shatenov - Shuudungut's Road - Frequency Glide Enterprises |
| Odugen Taiga Huun-Huur-Tu - Ancestors Call - World Village |
| Dour Mashaw Davlatmand Kholaf, Abdoussattar Abdoullaev - Music from East Tadjikestan - Kargha-e-Mousighi |
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Mark Valcour was a wonderful, sweet man, his sudden death comes as a complete shock. It's been close to two decades for my monthly tradition--last Thursday of the month, preparing the board to broadcast Live Revolutions remotely, expecting Mark's call just before 4pm and chatting with him about the upcoming concert recording while we listen to the Green Giant welcoming everyone--I can't count how many times Mark asked me if I had watched the Green Giant as a kid (yes I had) over the many years. Mark just seemed like an incredible, rock-solid reliable force. If there was anything which hampered the reliable appearance of Live Revolution over the years, it was always my hamfisted mistakes. I remember just a couple years ago during the holiday season, he called me at the usual time with his show ready to go at his end, and I could just not figure out how to bring it up on the board! The board had been changed with the new Ipod deck added since the last month, and I was not aware of the new configuration and was the only person in the building, I felt so terrible for letting down Mark and the band that was appearing and their fans, but the show was rescheduled and the band played on. I can't believe he's gone.
2:11 PM, January 8th, 2015