#4249, John Luther Adams, Become Desert

Hear the entire musical landscape by John Luther Adams, the third in a trilogy, called “Become Desert” for this New Sounds. The composer joins us in-studio to talk us through the work.

“Become Ocean” (2013), by John Luther Adams is a single cresting and crashing movement of orchestral waves of sound. The work, written for and recorded by The Seattle Symphony and conductor Ludovic Morlot, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music as well as a Grammy Award. The same ensemble and conductor premiered and recorded John Luther Adams’ latest expansive orchestral tone poem, “Become Desert”. As with “Become Ocean”, the follow-up, “Become Desert”, can be taken on a purely musical level, but that would ignore an environmental subtext.

The sonic palette of “Become Desert” is bright and brassy, yet also full of bell-like percussion, strings, and harps. There’s a map of how to deploy the orchestra and chorus, which is split into five smaller groups: strings, with harps and percussion (glockenspiel, bass drum, timpani); woodwinds and bowed crotales; brass with tubular bells; trumpets and trombones with tubular bells; and choir of human voices and handbells. (Notice that each group is equipped with some kind of percussion, fitting for the recovering drummer-as-composer.) There is a chorus in the work, and they sing just one word – “Luz”, Spanish for “light”.  The slow-moving blend of timbres and colors is meant to help us find the state of ‘swimming in light’ and the inevitable force of losing ourselves in this music. – Caryn Havlik

Program #4249, John Luther Adams, Become Desert (First aired 6/13/2019)

ARTIST: Seattle Symphony; Ludovic Morlot, cond.
WORK: John Luther Adams: Become Desert [39:53]
RECORDING: Become Desert
SOURCE: Cantaloupe Music
INFO: johnlutheradams.bandcamp.com