John Luther Adams, at first blush

Today, I got my weekly New Yorker and found an article by Alex Ross. Entitled Letter From Alaska, it is about John Luther Adams. This Adams is not to be mistaken from John Coolidge Adams, the "California" Adams of "Nixon in China", "Dr Atomic", "Death of Klinghoffer", and so forth -- the one we really listen to and appreciate. I'm a fan of contemporary music and actually saw a reference to this article earlier this week on Alex Ross's blog "The Rest if Noise". I've read Ross's book of the same name and enjoy reading his writing. I though, good, another new composer! What is he all about? Is this going to be another winner?

After finishing the article I went to Amazon and looked for "John Luther Adams" and found several hits. I looked for titles that Ross referenced and found that some that were available. A few were only available as CD's, so I ordered one "Earth and the Great Weather". I could immediately download some mp3's for only 99 cents, so I did. I patched them into my home-grown mp3 database and listened. Perhaps my choices weren't any good, but I was disappointed. There were 5 pieces, performed by the Cincinnati Percussion Ensemble. They were uninspiring and frankly boring. Dare I say it? Like tedious Edgar Varese.

Ross wrote about 20Th century composers in his book "The Rest is Noise". Prokofiev, Messiaen, Stravinsky, Sibelius, Strauss, -- all the major 20Th Century composers. He also mentioned many many composers like Varese and Feldman, two he referenced in the New Yorker article. Are they Important? I don't know. Listenable? Again, I don't know. I remember getting a record of Varese's music: Ionisation, Density 21.5, Integrales, Octandre, Hyperprism and Poeme Electronique. I still have the record, though I haven't converted it over into mp3's yet. I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Luther Adams from my first brush with him appeals much like Varese.

Morton Feldman does have his appeal. Perhaps the CD of Luther Adam's work Earth and the Great Weather will be more like Feldman than Varese. I'll have to wait for delivery to find out.

Does the radio audience get to hear John Luther Adams? Not for the FM classical stations I monitor. Looking for "Luther Adams" I found nothing with both names together. There were 1170 broadcasts of "Adams" and all appear to be the California one, not the Alaskan one. Luther was found 40 times, but were either by Martin Luther or involving Lutheran.