John Luther Adams: Become Desert

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Adams sustains the epic breadth by gradually lowering, then raising, the music’s pitch, and subtly bleeding different colours – timpani rolls, plangent horns - into and out of the cloudy notes... — BBC Music Magazine, October 2019, 4 out of 5 stars More…

Release Date: 14th Jun 2019
Catalogue No: CA21148
Label: Cantaloupe
Length: 40 minutes

Presto Recordings of the Year

Finalist 2019
The Guardian Classical Albums of the Year

2019

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Adams, J L: Become Desert

Work length40:22

Album only

Seattle Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony Chorale
Ludovic Morlot

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John Luther Adams' ‘Become Desert’ is a remarkable expansion on the ideas he developed for his Pulitzer-winning (and Grammy-winning) work, ‘Become Ocean.’ While not necessarily a "sequel" in the literal sense, the recording certainly shares multiple elements with its predecessor — including, most significantly, the renewal of Adam's creative partnership with conductor Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony. In his 2018 essay for the New York Times, Adams prepares us for listening to Become Desert with a map, of sorts, to help us find the state of "swimming in light" that the music is meant to convey. Along the way, "You begin to feel that this music you had thought was suspended in time is slowly leading you somewhere, pulling you somewhere. It continues upward, rising with inevitable force, like the wind or the light." Also included in this release is a video which includes a 5.1 surround mix of the recording, as well as a slideshow of desert images (all still photography by John Luther Adams) that loops during playback.

Reviews

October 2019

Adams sustains the epic breadth by gradually lowering, then raising, the music’s pitch, and subtly bleeding different colours – timpani rolls, plangent horns - into and out of the cloudy notes and harmonies hanging in the air. Ludovic Morlot and his Seattle forces sustain the journey marvellously well.

January/February 2020

The work begins quietly, with the sparse, high sounds of orchestra bells and string harmonics, slowly fills its texture, reaches a climax in its middle (rolling drums, deep brass, bass voices), and then reverses course.

4th July 2019

It’s woven from luminous textures that seem to be illuminated and transformed from within but which, despite the huge climaxes they generate, often feel as if they could evaporate at any moment. This is a very different orchestral journey from Adams’s previous masterpiece, but one that’s just as rewarding in this superb, beautifully recorded performance.

John Luther Adams: Become Desert

CD + DVD Video

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