Three darkly textured pieces for bass clarinet, marimba, vibraphone, piano, organ, violin, and double bass by 2014 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams, whose work tends to transcend his compositional devices—which churn away in the background while the surface shimmers with a simple joy in the very making of sounds. It is compelling, quietly expressive music that seems timeless in its sublimity. “Adams’s music is never less than spellbinding.” [Sequenza21/Contemporary Classical Music Weekly] “Amazingly beautiful, peaceful, and reflective—shimmering like the unusual landscape in which this composer resides.” [Chamber Music magazine] “An unbroken, slowly shifting, many-hued sound texture. Frequently energized by internal ripples and coruscations…major sevenths, ninths and higher combinations sounding as massive harmonic suspensions and conveying, metaphorically, a sense of enormous, uninhabited open space in which the only event is the slow and constant play of changing light upon an immense sky and a glacial landscape.” [Int’l Record Review] “This music from someone who knows who he is and what he wants…. I appreciate Adams’s devotion to his art and generosity of spirit. The musicians (most of them from the elite California EAR Unit) perform with similar devotion.” [Robert Carl, Fanfare magazine]
