John Luther Adams: Waves and Particles
Cold Blue Music

Countless composers have drawn inspiration from nature—Debussy, Smetana, and Messiaen spring to mind—but no composer has incarnated natural forces into his music more completely than John Luther Adams. His work, like that of any artist, has been influenced by the places he's lived, from the landscapes in Alaska and South America to the rural New Mexico setting he currently calls home. The music he's created in these places hasn't been just a response to the geography of the locale, however, but instead out-of-time material that somehow plays like a symbiotic, primordial, and elemental manifestation of the physical realm. Adams is a true original, though the term hardly seems adequate.

Adams is joined on Waves and Particles by the ever-intrepid JACK Quartet, as perfect a match between composer and performer as could be imagined. Comprised of violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, the group's passionate commitment to new music is shown in the large number of pieces it's commissioned from contemporary figures such as Julia Wolfe, Vijay Iyer, György Kurtág, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, and others. Premiered by JACK Quartet in November 2021 and recorded at Mount Vernon's Oktaven Audio in June 2023, Waves and Particles is the fourth collaboration between the quartet and Adams, with Lines Made by Walking, Everything That Rises, and The Wind in High Places the group's earlier releases for Cold Blue of the composer's music.

A cursory scan of the six movement titles suggests that Adams has burrowed beneath the surface of things to focus on matters that, even if invisible to the eye, account for physical phenomena. Here there is no wind generating sound across a string instrument's open strings but rather an attempt to render into musical form activity occurring at a sub-atomic level. On the release's inner sleeve, Adams clarifies that it was “inspired by quantum physics, fractal geometry, and noise” and that the musical content of the work “traverses a continuum from silence articulated by points of sound to rolling waves of pitch, timbre, intensity, and velocity.” Such a panoramic field encourages all manner of creative invention, and to that end the music extends from moments of stillness to tectonic intensity.

Each movement pursues its concept to an uncompromising end. “Particle Dust” opens the work with furious bowing, the strings roaring with machine-like combustion and the music expanding and contracting. Monotone pitches dominate and melody's eschewed for relentless rhythmic thrust. After a violin part exudes a rustic, fiddle-like quality reminiscent of country music, the playing gradually slows until the initial ferocity reinstates itself with relentless force. “Spectral Waves” presents a peaceful contrast to the opener in the slow-motion shimmer of its crystalline tendrils. After beginning at a furious clip, ”Velocity Waves” alternate between acceleration and deceleration, with the players layering their parts at different tempi. Whereas groaning, siren-like glissandos lend “Triadic Waves” a sea-sickly queasiness, hushed tremolos give “Murmurs in a Chromatic Field” a ghostly, mysterious character. “Particles Rising” revisits the tone and style of “Particle Dust” to close out the work with more flurries of aggressive bowing and quiet interludes.

July 2024