And why John Luther Adams turned from activism to art
Excerpt from this story from Sierra Club:
Musical composer John Luther Adams lived in Alaska for nearly 40 years, 10 of which he spent alone in a spartan cabin in a black spruce forest near Fairbanks. It contained little more than a beat-up piano and a clock he kept in the refrigerator. When he moved into the cabin, Adams was an environmental advocate and lobbied to prevent dams, roadways, and mining operations from being constructed in Alaska. Later, he turned his energy to composing and eventually won a Pulitzer Prize, saw his music performed at the Lincoln Center, and won the favor of Taylor Swift, David Byrne, and Thom Yorke.
Still, when a journalist told Adams his life could make for an interesting book, the musician balked. He'd published two books about his music, but they were written in what he describes as "composer-polemical-philosophical voice." He wasn't confident that his other writing style, "eco-preacher voice," would work for a memoir.
Challenged by his wife, Cynthia, to make his writing "as beautiful as the music," Adams at last found an approach—lean, clear—and in September 2020, Farrar, Straus and Giroux published an account of Adams's time in the 49th state: Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska.
Adams's music—typically played on acoustic instruments, with the occasional addition of electronics—seems enormous even in its quiet passages. He composed one piece, "Inuksuit," to be performed by up to 99 percussionists outdoors. And then there's "Ilimaq," a collaboration with drummer Glenn Kotche of Wilco, and "Become Ocean," which earned the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and so moved Taylor Swift while she was listening to a Seattle Symphony performance that she donated $50,000 to the orchestra.
In 2014, Adams and his wife left Alaska for New York—citing the "accelerating reality" of climate change (the decade prior, they'd witnessed vast wildfires, mild winters, and early snowmelts). During a return visit, Adams discovered his old cabin was sinking because of melting permafrost. Still, he has only recently realized how much the climate crisis has affected his psyche and music.
"What I'm composing now is the most grief-filled music I've ever written," Adams says. "There's this sense of loss, of sorrow, of grief that pervades it."
