In Monday’s (7/28) New York Times, Anthony Tommasini reviews John Luther Adams’s “Sila: The Breath of the World,” which had its premiere outdoors at Lincoln Center’s Hearst Plaza on Friday evening. For this “alluring, mystical” work, string players “lined up in a row on the edge of the tree grove facing the Paul Milstein Pool and Terrace…. A large group of woodwind and brass players walked up the slope of Illumination Lawn…. In a bold touch, 16 members of the impressive contemporary music choir the Crossing … waded right into the pool … [and] sloshed slowly around the shallow pool using black megaphones…. Adams says … that Sila is not just some elusive natural force, but ‘our awareness of the world around us.’ … To capture this process in sound, he constructed the piece in 16 harmonic clouds, as he calls them, grounded on the first 16 harmonics (or overtones) of a low B flat…. The plaza became a humming, mass of subdued, flowing sounds.… Most of the people who attended ‘Sila’ listened raptly, talking very little, and getting into the spirit.… Musicians from many well-known ensembles took part, including Asphalt Orchestra, JACK Quartet, TILT Brass, Eighth Blackbird and more.… I could imagine ‘Sila’ being performed in the plaza every summer. On the other hand, how about more such commissions?” John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean, which was first performed by the Seattle Symphony, was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Posted July 28, 2014
Overhead photo of John Luther Adams’s “Sila: The Breath of the World” by Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
