Awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and described by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross as “…the loveliest apocalypse in musical history,” John Luther Adams’ majestic orchestral work, “Become Ocean” is a thrilling exploration of depth, turbulence, eerie silence and ultimately enveloping calm.

 

Performed by the Seattle Symphony under the baton of Ludovic Morlot, the music casts an expressive arc that’s by turns intimate and expansive — an ebbing and flowing sonic journey that finds the composer testing the very limits of his imagination.

 

The music, by Alaska native Adams, is without genre. It ebbs and flows over the listener with depth and intensity, mimicking the rush and fall, the gentleness and wild power, of the oceans around the globe. The composer notes, “As the polar ice melts and the se level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that on afain, we may quite literally become ocean.”

 

Meant to be listened to as a continuous whole, “Become Ocean” is a unique musical experience, one that leaves the listener at once relaxed and exhilarated and somehow totally transformed.

 

The work was commissioned by the Seattle Symphony Orchestra in 2013. It is available as a 2-disc CD with a DVD or as a CD album. For further information, check out cantaloupemusic.com.

 

(caption): John Luther Adams in Banff, by Donald + Lee.

Comments are closed.