JOHN LUTHER ADAMS
ON THE WORLD PREMIER OF ‘EVERYTHING THAT RISES’

July 20, 2017 | by John Luther Adams

JACK Quartet will perform 'Everything That Rises'

The world premiere of Everything That Rises comes to SFJAZZ on July 28, part of a weeklong Festival celebrating the many works of Pulitzer Prize and GRAMMY-winning composer John Luther Adams. The composer shared program notes for the new work. Here's the backstory.

 "I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet, and I understood how I might be able to make the medium my own. The result was The Wind in High Places — a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings.

Over the next few years, two more quartets followed. The second quartet, untouched, is a further exploration of the Aeolian sound world of the first. Then, in Canticles of the Sky, the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of their instruments.

And now comes Everything That Rises. This fourth quartet is more expansive, both in time and in space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World — a performance-length choral/orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds.

San Francisco Chronicle reviews John Luther Adams' Canticles of the Holy Wind

Everything That Rises traverses this same territory, but in a much more melodic way. Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats. Over the course of an hour, the lines spin out —always rising— in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiral upward...until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing."

John Luther Adams

And a final note...

"My music is usually presented in the 'classical' music world. But the conventional labels and categories of musical style are disappearing. And smart listeners don't really care how music is classified. They just want to hear music that touches them, or moves the, or grabs them by the ears. So I'm thrilled that SF Jazz is ignoring the labels, and presenting such a broad range of my music over the course of a week."