Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Silences So Deep: Music, Solitude, Alaska
Author: ADAMS JOHN LUTHER
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 30/10/2020
Imprint: FARRAR, STRAUS & GIROUX
Price: $45.00
Publishing status: Active
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 and forests of the far northand across distinctive mental and aural terrainthat would last for the next forty years. Silences So Deep is Adamss account of these formative decadesand of what its like to live alone in the frozen woods, composing music by day and spending ones evenings with a raucous crew of poets, philosophers, and fishermen. From adolescent lovesEdgard Varse and Frank Zappato 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. A Knstlerroman with an artistic sensibility all its own, 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. 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, it is also the story of Adamss 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 fecund account of a creative life.
ISBN: 9780374264628
Weight: 300gr