Player Score-John Luther Adams' Always Very Soft for Percussion Trio. Player score. 'I began Always Very Soft in the spring of 1973 and completed it more than three decades later. Originally the piece was scored for percussion trio and de-tuned 'cello. I conducted that version in my nal semester at the California Institute of the Arts. In time I came to regard it as my last student work andwithdrew it from my active catalog. Fast forward thirty-some-odd years to the spring of 2007. For quite some time I'd had in mind to compose a perpetual acceleration canon - music that seemsalways to be getting faster but somehow never really does. As I pondered this I remembered that piece from long ago. So I dug out the old score and looked it over. From my new perspective itseemed to me that my younger self had been attempting to compose a continuum of discontinuities - weaving disparate timbres and velocities into a subtly articulated whole. This new version of Always Very Softcontains not a single note from the original version. But I hope it conveys a more coherent and essential distillation of that early musical thought.' - John Luther Adams
SKU: HL.236804
UPC: 888680720100. 9.5x12.0x0.632 inches.
Grammy-winning composer John Luther Adams always speaks with reverence about capturing “the tone within the noise,” and if any of his recent work can be said to take that mission directly to heart, it's Ilimaq. A true electro-acoustic recording that channels the energy, passion and precision of Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, Ilimaq (which loosely translates from the native Alaskan Inupiaq language as “spirit journeys”) maps a vivid, phantasmagorical progression through liquid cascades of percussion, otherworldly ambient soundscapes, harmonic dissonance, melodic convergence and almost everything that's musically – and sonically – possible in between.
SKU: HL.248688
UPC: 888680729080. 9x12 inches. English.
“Gordon Wright was the friend of a lifetime. For thirty years Gordon and I shared our two greatest passions: music and Alaska. Gordon was my musical collaborator, my next-door neighbor, my fellow environmentalist and my camping buddy. These miniatures are musical sketches of three moments and places in our friendship. Like Alaska, Gordon was larger than life. He always lived his own way. And he died just as he would have wanted. We found him lying on the deck of his cabin in the Chugach Mountains, curled up against his favorite birch tree, looking across the waters of Turnagain Arm toward the Resurrection Valley and the tiny settlement of Hope.” - John Luther AdamsThis music contains no normal stopped tones. All the sounds are produced as natural harmonics or on open strings. There are no harmonics higher than the sixth. So these sounds should be clear and resonant. Even so, balancing the harmonics with the open strings requires careful attention.The durations of the individual pieces are given at the end of each.The total duration of the set is about ten minutes.
SKU: HL.284555
UPC: 888680912901. 9x12 inches.
Composers note:I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet, and I understood how I might be able to make the medium my own. The result was The Wind in High Places - a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings.Over the next few years, two more quartets followed. The second quartet, untouched, is a further exploration of the aeolian sound world of the first. Then, in Canticles of the Sky, the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of their instruments.And now comes Everything That Rises.This fourth quartet is more expansive, both in time and in space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World - a performance-length choral/orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds.Everything That Rises traverses this same territory, but in a much more melodic way.Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats.Over the course of an hour, the lines spin out - always rising - in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiral upward... until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing.
