EBOOK
About
The story of a composer's life in the Alaskan wilderness and a meditation on making art in a landscape acutely threatened by climate change
In the summer of 1975, the composer John Luther Adams, then a twenty-two-year-old graduate of CalArts, boarded a flight to Alaska. So began a journey into the mountains, forests, and tundra of the far north-and across distinctive mental and aural terrain-that would last for the next forty years.
Silences So Deep is Adams's account of these formative decades-and of what it's like to live alone in the frozen woods, composing music by day and spending one's evenings with a raucous crew of poets, philosophers, and fishermen. From adolescent loves-Edgard Varèse and Frank Zappa-to mature preoccupations with the natural world that inform such works as The Wind in High Places, Adams details the influences that have allowed him to emerge as one of the most celebrated and recognizable composers of our time. Silences So Deep is also a memoir of solitude enriched by friendships with the likes of the conductor Gordon Wright and the poet John Haines, both of whom had a singular impact on Adams's life. Whether describing the travails of environmental activism in the midst of an oil boom or midwinter conversations in a communal sauna, Adams writes with a voice both playful and meditative, one that evokes the particular beauty of the Alaskan landscape and the people who call it home.
Ultimately, this book is also the story of Adams's difficult decision to leave a rapidly warming Alaska and to strike out for new topographies and sources of inspiration. In its attentiveness to the challenges of life in the wilderness, to the demands of making art in an age of climate crisis, and to the pleasures of intellectual fellowship, Silences So Deep is a singularly rich account of a creative life.
In the summer of 1975, the composer John Luther Adams, then a twenty-two-year-old graduate of CalArts, boarded a flight to Alaska. So began a journey into the mountains, forests, and tundra of the far north-and across distinctive mental and aural terrain-that would last for the next forty years.
Silences So Deep is Adams's account of these formative decades-and of what it's like to live alone in the frozen woods, composing music by day and spending one's evenings with a raucous crew of poets, philosophers, and fishermen. From adolescent loves-Edgard Varèse and Frank Zappa-to mature preoccupations with the natural world that inform such works as The Wind in High Places, Adams details the influences that have allowed him to emerge as one of the most celebrated and recognizable composers of our time. Silences So Deep is also a memoir of solitude enriched by friendships with the likes of the conductor Gordon Wright and the poet John Haines, both of whom had a singular impact on Adams's life. Whether describing the travails of environmental activism in the midst of an oil boom or midwinter conversations in a communal sauna, Adams writes with a voice both playful and meditative, one that evokes the particular beauty of the Alaskan landscape and the people who call it home.
Ultimately, this book is also the story of Adams's difficult decision to leave a rapidly warming Alaska and to strike out for new topographies and sources of inspiration. In its attentiveness to the challenges of life in the wilderness, to the demands of making art in an age of climate crisis, and to the pleasures of intellectual fellowship, Silences So Deep is a singularly rich account of a creative life.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"[An] illuminating memoir."
Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times
"A generous work, full of wisdom about artistic vision and its association to place . . . The book's description of Mr. Adams's solitary cabin is worth the price of purchase. He took his inspiration from Thoreau's Walden, and it is hard to imagine another American creating art in a more romantic or challenging setting."
Michael O'Donnell, The Wall Street Journal
"The ruggedly soulful music of composer John Luther Adams has been intimately associated with the wide-open landscapes of Alaska, where he made his home for four decades. How this Mississippi-born composer navigated his own Thoreauvian journey toward solitude and wilderness, and how he became the poet of the sounds he hears in their conjoining, are the subjects of this compelling new memoir . . . [Adams's] writing style is free of artifice and disarmingly candid."
Jeremy Eichler, The Boston Globe