Composer
John Luther Adams
lived in Alaska for many years and wrote music inspired by its landscapes. Back in the lower 48 (and Mexico), he has sought out other themes, but the change in his musical style is not a dramatic one.
Adams
' great strength is that that style, in an age of -isms and -ists, is not easily classifiable. His de-emphasis of tonality may come from the minimalists, but his musical surfaces are too varied for that descriptor. Now, he talks about scientific ideas, saying that here he was "inspired by quantum physics, fractal geometry, and noise -- which function as elemental metaphors in my music." On hearing statements of this kind, one perhaps wants to play the music for a quantum physicist or a mathematician to discover whether they hear anything in it. Yet it is unquestionable that
extracts fresh sounds from the string quartet medium, all without recourse to electronics or extended techniques. The
Waves and Particles
of the album title refer to different types of pieces; the "waves" are musical patterns that fall in and out of sync with each other, while the "particles" are small items that hang near the border of perceptibility. The music is absorbing over the courses of fairly large structures, and it is beautifully recorded at suburban New York's Oktaven Audio, with a good deal of post-production work, although the
Cold Blue Music
label is based in southern California. The
JACK Quartet
has worked with
several times in the past and is attuned to the flavor of his music, and the quartet genre arguably sets his style off to maximum advantage, removing a monumentality that does not always work. This album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Small Ensemble/Chamber Music Performance. ~ James Manheim