John Luther Adams at Icebreaker IV

In January I participated in the Seattle Chamber Players’ Icebreaker IV new music festival, including a Seattle premiere of my “Twilight for Adored and Breathless Moments. This was a tremendous honor, not only because of their excellent performance of my piece, but because of the company I was in: Anna Clyne, Alexadra Gardner, Judd Greenstein, Nico Muhly, Mason Bates, William Britelle. On the second evening of the concert the “older generation” of composers were presented: Kyle Gann, Janice Giteck (my mother!), John Luther Adams and others. In addition all the composers gave 45 minute presentations of their work. Seattle is one of my home towns (born in CA)...so it was awesome to spend some time downtown with my wife and be a part of the new music scene there.

Of everything I heard on either concert, John Luther Adams’ piece was the most memorable. I had heard his music before, but had not been open to until this time. He also presented some other pieces in his presentation - this music is like a wall of sound, but shifting and modulating very slowly...overtones popping out and dissonances resolving in a mosaic of timbre. Then my mother told a story in her presentation about visiting his home and composition studio in Fairbanks...completely remote and isolated from the rest of the world. I kept having images of the opening scenes from “Insomnia” where the plane with Al Pacino is flying over the miles and miles of ice...then something struck me about his music in that it seems to represent Alaska. But not in a cold way - something which moves and undulates the way the seasons change...crystalline, remote, moving very slowly like a glacier. It was extremely memorable, and moving in such a unique way...looking forward to hearing more of his stuff performed live, as a recording could just never do it justice.

It was also very interesting to see how tonal this younger generation of composers is..I guess it’s being labeled as a “post-minimalism” thing. Reading the reviews it seems that my music is being lumped into this Post-minimalism genre, and what’s interesting is that I don’t consider myself a post-minimalist. I certainly have listened to and been inspired by Reich, Adams, and the other icons, but I feel like my primary influences are more melodic and gesturally oriented: Messiaen, Zappa...where tonal harmony meets atonal melody all in the service of gesture. As soon as you have a repeating fragment or groove, is that minimalism? Isn’t minimalism a process as seen in the notes? Isn’t it time to let “minimalism” die with the 70’s and figure out a more intelligent way to talk about these young composers?

-md