Tonight, in a conversation recorded two weeks ago, I speak with American composer John Luther Adams (above). Long resident in Alaska, Adams was in Chicago to hear several of his pieces played on March 15 as a part of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's MusicNOW concert series in a program curated by outgoing CSO Mead Composer-in-Residence Osvaldo Golijov. Adams's 2007 work for orchestra and electronics Dark Waves will have its major orchestral première in October with guest conductor Jaap Van Zweden leading the CSO. (Van Zweden gave the European première of the work with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in Amsterdam in December, 2007.) Adams and I talk about personal and artistic independence in the life of a composer, the attraction of specific spaces and the limitations of regionalism, and even the Alaska Baseball League and its annual Midnight Sun Game, among other topics. We'll also listen to Dark Waves in its (12 minute) entirety and to excerpts of Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-1995). You can read Alex Ross's 2008 New Yorker profile of Adams, "Song of the Earth," here. 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. CDT on 98.7WFMT Chicago and via free streaming on wfmt.com and subsequently available indefinitely for download/podcast/streaming at wfmt.com/criticalthinking. See you on the radio!
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