Nature As Song

The environmentalist/nature composer John Luther Adams is much in tune with the natural world. His life in Alaska led him to create a sound-art instillation in which live nature dictates musical tones and ambient lighting within a room called "The Place Where You Go to Listen." Adams' necessary message is not the first to be recognized: the human connection with nature is what life is about and yet the deterioration of it will be the greatest blow to humanity.

Adams speaks of his infinite passion in Song of the Earth featured in The New Yorker:

“My music is going inexorably from being about place to becoming place,” Adams said of his installation. “I have a vivid memory of flying out of Alaska early one morning on my way to Oberlin, where I taught for a couple of fall semesters. It was a glorious early-fall day. Winter was coming in. I love winter, and I didn’t want to go. As we crested the central peaks of the Alaska Range, I looked down at Mt. Hayes, and all at once I was overcome by the intense love that I have for this place—an almost erotic feeling about those mountains. Over the next fifteen minutes, I found myself furiously sketching, and when I came up for air I realized, There it is. I knew that I wanted to hear the unheard, that I wanted to somehow transpose the music that is just beyond the reach of our ears into audible vibrations. I knew that it had to be its own space. And I knew that it had to be real—that I couldn’t fake this, that nothing could be recorded. It had to have the ring of truth."

Read the rest of Song of the Earth here.