Red Arc / Blue Veil   CB0026

The music

The four pieces that make up this CD—Dark Waves, Among Red Mountains, Qilyuan, and Red Arc/Blue Veil—are for various combinations of one or two pianos, percussion, and electronics. Each piece is built from a complex, polyrhythmic layering of voices that combine to form large, multi-arch musical shapes that explore a rich palette of harmonic and timbral colors, lush textures, and clear, simple compositional forms. This is music of broad strokes and ever-changing ebb and flow.

The composer writes about these pieces:

Dark Waves

“An earlier version of Dark Waves, for orchestra and electronic sounds, was commissioned and premiered by the Anchorage Symphony. This version (2007) for two pianos and processed tracks is a substantially new piece.

“As I composed Dark Waves I pondered the ominous events of our times: war and terrorism, intensifying storms and wildfires, the melting of the polar ice and the rising of the seas. Yet even in the presence of our deepening fears, we find ourselves immersed in the mysterious beauty of this world. Amid the turbulent waves we may still find the light, the wisdom and the courage we need to pass through this darkness of our own making.

“In it, the pianists ride the crests of an electronic “aura” composed of sounds derived from the acoustic instruments. Waves of Perfect Fifths rise and fall, in tempo relationships of 3, 5 and 7, cresting in a tsunami of sound encompassing all twelve chromatic tones and the full range of the pianos.”

Among Red Mountains

“On a visit to New York I heard the premiere performance of a lovely ensemble work by Kyle Gann that embraces multiple tempos without sustaining them all at the same time. On the way home to Alaska I passed through Seattle. In the Seattle airport there’s a large painting by Frank Stella, in which arcs of bright colors weave in and out of one another in a dizzying counterpoint of imaginary planes. Studying this painting (after hearing Gann’s music), it occurred to me that I might be able to do something similar with the piano.

“Virtually all my recent music has been composed of four, five or six simultaneous tempo layers. If those ensemble and orchestral pieces are sculptures, Among Red Mountains (2001) is more like a drawing. In this piece the challenge I set for myself was to suggest five independent tempo planes within the limitations of two hands and what pianist Vicki Ray calls “the Big Black Box”.

“For three decades I’ve admired the piano music of Peter Garland. I hope this piece is worthy of its dedication to him. The title is the translation of the Gwich’in Athabascan name for a place in the Brooks Range, north of Arctic Village.”

Qilyaun

“‘Qilyaun’ is the Iñupiaq word for the shaman’s drum. Translated literally, it means ‘device of power.’ The drum is the shaman’s vehicle for spirit journeys. The shaman rides the sound of the drum to and from the spirit world.

“Qilyaun (1998) may be performed by four drummers, or by a single drummer with electronic delay. Commissioned by the Fairbanks Symphony Association, the piece is dedicated to Scott Deal, who gave its first performances.

“Qilyaun traverses a continuum of rhythm. From the rapid-fire streams of the opening, the drummers gradually decelerate to sustained rolls in the middle, then gradually accelerate again to the unison ending.”

Red Arc/Blue Veil

“Red Arc/Blue Veil (2001) is the first piece in a projected cycle exploring the geometry of time and color—what Kandinsky called ‘those inner sounds that are the life of the colors.’

“As in all of my recent music, I imagine the entire ensemble (piano, percussion, and processed sounds) as a single instrument, and the entire piece as a single complex sonority. The processed sounds are derived directly from the acoustical instruments…. In Red Arc/Blue Veil, the electronic sounds are layered in tempo relationships of 3, 5 and 7, while the piano and mallet percussion trace a single arc, rising and falling from beginning to end.

“Red Arc/Blue Veil was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Sirius.”

The composer

John Luther Adams has created a unique musical world rooted in wilderness landscapes and natural phenomena. His music includes works for orchestra, chamber ensembles, soloists, and electronic media, and is recorded on the Cold Blue, New World, Cantaloupe, Mode, and New Albion labels. His book Winter Music is published by Wesleyan University Press, and his writings about music and nature have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies.

In 2006 Adams was named one of the first United States Artists fellows. Previously he has received fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Rasmuson Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has served as composer in residence with the Fairbanks Symphony, Anchorage Symphony, and Alaska Public Radio, and has taught at the University of Alaska, Bennington College, and the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

Adams’s sound and light environment The Place Where You Go to Listen is a permanent feature of the Museum of the North. Currently, he is working on Sila: The Breath of the World—a network of installations transforming weather data from all over the Earth into music and light.

“Out of many eligible composers of his generation, John Luther Adams is the greatest proponent of the American experimental tradition, a lineage that includes Ives, Cowell, Varese, Partch, Nancarrow, Cage and Tenney.” —Sequenza 21/Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

“Adams’s music can be superficially described as the intersection of two diverse influences: Feldman and Cowell…. [H]is scores bear the ubiquitous marks of Cowell’s multitempoed rhythmic structures…. The Feldman influence manifests itself as a delight in delicately balanced sonorities used as recurring images.” —Kyle Gann, American Music in the 20th Century

“The music of John Luther Adams is simply beautiful. It has a crystalline quality and a peaceful character that evoke the Arctic life…. Adams’ music sounds like it has nothing to accomplish. It simply exists, hanging in mid-air, waiting to be listened to.” —All-Music Guide

The performers

Stephen Drury is well known as a champion of contemporary music. His repertoire extends from Bach, Schubert, and Liszt to the complete piano sonatas of Charles Ives and music by John Cage, Elliott Carter, Frederic Rzewski, John Zorn, Morton Feldman, Gyorgy Ligeti, and Luciano Berio. He has commissioned new works from John Zorn, John Cage, Terry Riley, Lee Hyla and Chinary Ung. Drury has performed throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He teaches at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he directs the Callithumpian Consort. He has recorded for Mode, Tzadik, Avant, New Albion, Catalyst, MusicMasters, and Neuma.

Yukiko Takagi has performed with the orchestra of the Bologna Teatro Musicale, the John Zorn Ensemble, the Auros Group for New Music, Santa Cruz New Music Works, the Harvard Group for New Music, and the Chameleon Arts Ensemble. She performs regularly with the Eliza Miller Dance Company and the Ruth Birnberg Dance Company and gives frequent duo-piano concerts with Stephen Drury. Takagi is a featured performer with the Callithumpian Consort. Her recording of Colin McPhee’s Balinese Cerimonial Dances was released by MusicMasters.

Scott Deal is an active new-music percussionist who has performed at venues in London, Atlanta, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Moscow. He has also appeared at the Sub Tropics New Music Festival, May in Miami, and for the Society of Electro-Acoustic Musicians and the Percussive Arts Society. Inspired by new and emerging artistic technologies, he is a founding member of ART GRID, an Internet2 telematic performing collective comprised of a multi-disciplinary group of artists and computer specialists. In this capacity he has performed at Supercomputing Global, SIGGRAPH, Chicago Calling, Ingenuity Festival and with groups that include Another Language, Digital Worlds Institute, and the Helsinki Computer Orchestra.

Stuart Gerber is an active new-music percussionist who has been involved in many world-premiere performances and has commissioned a number of works, including Adams’s Red Arc/Blue Veil. He has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, Australia, and Mexico as a soloist and in the piano/percussion duo Ensemble Sirius. Gerber is percussion soloist/faculty for the annual Karlheinz Stockhausen Composition and Interpretation Courses and a founding member of the Atlanta-based new-music group Bent Frequency. In addition to Adams and Stockhausen, he has worked with such notable composers as Kaija Saariaho, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, George Crumb, Tristan Murail, Tania Lèon, and Michael Colgrass. Gerber has recorded for the Mode, Stockhausen Complete Edition (Stockhausen-Verlag), Vienna Modern Masters, and Albany labels.

Comments

“There’s a sense of vast, open space in John Luther Adams’s music that’s without a ready parallel among American composers. Carl Ruggles, from the early 20th century, probably comes closest, but composition has largely been an urban pursuit, and Adams, living in Alaska, breathes different air from the rest of his colleagues.… The four postminimalist works here each play out over 10 to 15 minutes, but sound as if they could go on forever. Among Red Mountains, played by pianist Drury, places loud cluster chords up against each other, and lets the piano ring out. As the repeated chords fade, you start to notice different notes inside, and what looks pretty basic on paper turns out to be deep and rich. Drury’s playing sounds as if it could fill the Bering Strait, especially as he bangs out big music in the bass clef.… The same goes for Qilyuan, for four bass drums. The percussionists’ repeated rhythms create waves of sound, and again, the music cascades out on a grand scale. The throbbing echoes created by all the stickwork add a third layer of activity similar to the resonance of the piano in Among Red Mountains.… Dark Waves opens the disc, with two pianos. Unlike the chords of Among Red Mountains, here the pianists trade motives and fragments, interspersed with electronic sounds. Piano, percussion and electronics come together for the title piece at the end. Deal’s tinkling vibraphone and crotales (antique cymbals) play off Drury’s meditative piano, and the wide vista stretches out in front of you, waiting.” — Marc Geelhoed, Time Out Chicago

“Adams strives to create musical counterparts to the geography, ecology, and native culture of his home state [Alaska]…by literally anchoring the work in the landscapes that have inspired it…. Adams’s major works have the appearance of being beyond style; they transcend the squabbles of contemporary classical music, the unending arguments over the relative value of Romantic and modernist languages.” —Alex Ross, The New Yorker

“John Luther Adams has been making an original music in a solitary mode for decades now, drawing his inspiration from his adopted home state of Alaska. If one has not heard his music before, it’s important to emphasize that his voice is not ‘picturesque,’ nor does he indulge in historical tropes of pioneers or Inuit ethnology. Rather, in the tradition of such American mavericks as Harry Partch and Carl Ruggles (and more recently James Tenney and Peter Garland), he writes music that is often extremely complex and abstract in its details, yet gripping and immediately accessible in its large-scale vision. The Alaskan geography is an inspiration to him mostly in its overwhelming expansiveness and its suggestion of vast natural forces beyond human scale, pointing toward infinity.… This new collection includes two works for piano duo, one for two bass-drum players, and one for pianist and percussionist.… As is characteristic of the composer, the music in each piece tends to project a ‘template’ of a particular sound and texture that then gradually changes over about 15 minutes. Dark Waves is all rippling arpeggios and tremolos, while Among Red Mountains consists of chunky overlapped chords, which grow and recede like the geography of its title (I find the ecstatic sound of this piece, breaking through its brutal surface, the star of the show). Qilyuan consists of accelerating and decelerating layers of drumbeats, and is the most austere work, while Red Arc/Blue Veil is an arc of shimmering harmonies that rises and falls one time over its registral ambitus (the percussionist’s instrumentation of vibraphone and crotales ensures its brilliant color).… If anything distinguishes these pieces to my ear from earlier works of Adams, it’s the harmonic content … There seems to be a stronger engagement with what one might call ‘beauty’ than I’ve heard before. I also feel there’s some connection with harmonies built out of the overtone series, though that may be coming as an offshoot of the stacked perfect fifths that make up much of the music. Whatever the reason, I found the waves of sound more sensually satisfying than usual; there has always been enormous force and power in Adams’s music, but I’ve experienced more pleasure and delight in this round…a rich an satisfying program, and one that shows continued growth by one of our most committedly adventurous composers.” —Robert Carl, Fanfare magazine

“Not to be confused with fellow (and slightly older) American minimalist composer John Adams (Nixon in China, etc.), John Luther Adams (b. 1953) is a postminimalist composer who has made his home in Alaska since the late 1970s, receiving far less popular acclaim, but taking much greater artistic risks. In 2007, there’s no question as to which of the two composers I prefer. Like Reich and Glass, John Adams seems to be repeating himself more and more in his advancing years, whereas John Luther Adams seems to be striking out in new directions each time I hear a new CD of his…. Superficially, the four works on this new CD have little in common. The aptly named Dark Waves finds two pianists producing, in the words of the composer, ‘waves of perfect fifths, in tempo relationships of 3, 5, and 7, cresting in a tsunami of sound encompassing all twelve chromatic tones and the full range of the pianos.’ To use another watery metaphor, the effect is titanic, and although the mood of the work is dark, there is an openness to the harmonies, even a luminosity, that makes it almost pretty. This prettiness is created, in part, by the use of electronic ‘auras’ created by sampling and processing of the acoustic pianos…. Among Red Mountains also explores multiple parallel tempos—five, as a matter of fact. While Dark Waves is watery (albeit massive), Among Red Mountains seems to be about solids. The former is Adams’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, if you will, and the latter is the ‘Hammerklavier.’… Qilyuan is a tour de force of bass drumming—a stampede of insistent sound that slims down to isolated beats and quiet rolls in the middle, only to build back up again at the end, only to be suddenly cut off. Fascinatingly, the sound made by the two drums is not unlike that made by the whirling blades of a helicopter…although here, the length of the blades is constantly changing! There’s something very ritualistic about this work, and indeed, ‘Qilyuan’ is an Inuit word for a ‘device of power,’ or a shaman’s drum…. Red Arc/Blue Veil gives this CD its overall title. Again, electronic sampling and processing are used to alter the sounds of the piano, vibraphone, and crotales, and several tempos are layered over one another. Despite the electronic ‘aura,’ the ear can pick out the hypnotic rise and fall of the piano, and the more complicated decorations of the vibraphone. Like Dark Waves, Red Arc/Blue Veil is pretty, but it is anything but sweet…. The performances date from 2004-07, and as the CD was co-produced by the composer, one assumes that he got precisely what he wanted out of the performers and the engineers.… Very recommendable for the adventurous.” —Raymond Tuttle, ClassicalNet

“Red Arc/Blue Veil contrasts some of John Luther Adams’s piano music with his percussion music, an appropriate idea as, at least in these pieces; Adams treats the piano as a sort of hyper-percussion orchestra. Pianists Stephen Drury and Yukiko Takagi perform Adams’s Dark Waves (2007) which is scored for two pianos and electronic sounds. Certainly, the piece perfectly illustrates the title, as it consists of huge, ever expanding volleys of piano sound that evokes a stormy night’s voyage spent on the Bering Sea, impressive waves crashing over one’s ship. The electronic sounds appear to be a mere extension of the piano’s capability to sustain and are not in themselves ostentatious, as the designation would suggest. Among Red Mountains (2001) is a solo piano piece played by Drury; here Adams utilizes the piano cluster chord in a manner reminiscent of Henry Cowell’s The Snows of Fujiyama, but also differently. While Cowell sought to capture the majesty of the huge snowdrifts of the great Japanese peak, Adams’s aim is to address the granitic strength of mountains themselves; Among Red Mountains is consistently loud, big music. Qilyuan (1998) is the earliest work on the disc, scored for four bass drums or one bass drum and a digital delay; Scott Deal and Stuart Gerber of the Percussion Group of Cincinnati perform double duty. The piece rumbles along like a great multi-frequency earthquake; relatively few would think of the lowly bass drum as an instrument that possesses considerable capabilities of expression, but Adams and his interpreters locate its possibilities. Drury returns to perform the title work, Red Arc/Blue Veil (2002), on piano with Deal on vibes and crotales, or ‘antique cymbals,’ small brass discs whose artifactual ancestors date back into pre-history. As with Dark Waves, some small amount of electronics is in use here, and once again, it is hard to say whether these are prepared elements or interactive ones. Like Dark Waves, the piece moves forward in sheets of sound, though these are more brightly colored and not as monolithic; Red Arc/Blue Veil is more of a journey taken through the mind’s eye rather than anything related to the environmental phenomena that Adams finds so stimulating to his work. Cold Blue’s recording is of outstanding quality, and the performances reflect the vision of the composer about as closely as interpretations can; there is a collaborative aspect to much of the music Adams writes and these performers are particularly close to him. Cold Blue’s Red Arc/Blue Veil will be of strong interest to percussion fanciers, however anyone interested in highly imaginative, non-systematized contemporary music should be able to get something out of it.” —Dave Lewis, All-Music Guide

“A fascinating offering. Red Arc/Blue Veil consists of four pieces.… Dark Waves is for two pianos and the title is most appropriate. The two pianos shimmer in dark, turbulent waves. Layers of resonating notes provide a dense hazy landscape. It sounds as is if we are listening to a piano concerto at the bottom of the ocean. Among Red Mountains is for solo piano and it is also filled with what sounds like random clusters of notes, which resonate in the space between the clusters. On one hand, it sounds as if the pianist is randomly selecting the odd chords he plays, yet somehow there is an inner logic or overall arc that holds this piece together. Qilyuan is for two bass drums and deals with the rumbling texture(s) of the two drums pounding together and moving in waves back and forth between the speakers. It is tribal sounding and hypnotic, although the rhythms are slowly altered throughout the duration. The title piece is for piano and one percussionist playing vibes and crotales. The notes shimmer in a magical mist that is breathtaking to take in. I am reminded of a section of Tubular Bells or the piano outro from Soft Machine’s Out-Bloody-Rageous. Either way, this piece is particularly enchanting and completely mesmerizing.” —Bruce Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery Newsletter

“American composer John Luther Adams roots the provocative pieces comprising Red Arc/Blue Veil in a distinctive universe where pianos and percussion sonically evoke the majesty of natural phenomena. Despite changes in instrumentation (one piece features two pianos, while another two bass drums), each of the four works emphasizes a buildup of multi-layered, polyrhythmic blocks of sound and compositional development that seems to unfold in slow motion.… Dark Waves, presented in a 2007 arrangement for two pianos and processed material (an electronic aura derived from the acoustic instruments’ sounds), quite literally rises and falls in waves of perfect fifths. The pianos swell into dynamic clusters of crushing force—Adams’ own description, ‘a tsunami of sound,’ is not inaccurate—yet at the same time seem to gracefully bound through the upper stratospheres. Naturally, the title calls to mind La Mer and Dark Waves does share with it an impressionistic quality, but Adams’s piece is more turbulent and plunges deeper. A melodic dimension is, of course, present but the album’s four pieces are first and foremost about physicality, and the brute force of percussive sound. Nowhere is that more evident than in the second piece, Among Red Mountains (2001), where piano chords violently rain down like hammer blows. The relentless and incessant assault is so dizzying, it’s easy to lose sight of the piece’s guiding idea, the realization of five simultaneous yet independent tempo planes by two hands.… Obviously the least conventionally melodic of the four pieces, Qilyaun (1998), an Iñupiaq word for the shaman’s drum and that, literally translated, means ‘device of power'” is performed by two percussionists playing bass drums. Best appreciated via headphones, the piece opens with urgent, rapid-fire rolls that then gradually decelerate until they’re reduced to single blows (though a roll can be heard simmering in the background) before, predictably, accelerating again during the piece’s final third. Though obviously the instrumentation is minimal, the subtle shift in emphasis as rolls in one channel overlap with those in the other manages to uphold listening interest. Rich instrumental color provided by vibraphone and crotales enhances the billowing piano streams of Red Arc/Blue Veil (2001), while processed sounds (again derived directly from the acoustic instruments) add a swarm-like overlay, and function as a fourth instrument of sorts. Not only here but in the other three pieces too, Adams’s music might be likened to powerful glacial masses whose movements are so slow they’re imperceptible. —Ron Schepper, Textura

“Although written for differing forces, these four pieces make an intelligible and satisfying programme heard in sequence; the spacing between them rather suggests the composer hears it this way too. Dark Waves draws pianos into a majestic unfolding of arpeggios and washes of resonance that evoke natural phenomena without the need for mystical baggage, while Among Red Mountains unleashes piano chords of varying density with a steadfastness comparable to the Sixth Piano Sonata of Galina Ustvolskaya—though her glowering intensity is worlds away from the elemental immediacy evoked here. Qilyuan is even more reductive in the way that its two bass drums decelerate to the point of utter stasis, systematically regaining their initial velocity by the close, then Red Arc/Blue Veil integrates its intricate piano figuration with the pellucid tracery of vibraphone and crotales to sensuous effect.… The performances are as attentive to the needs of this music as one might expect, indicating long sessions refining the interpretative concept of each piece, while the spaciousness of the recording is never at the price of its impact. A pity there are not even cursory annotations included (Adams may intend that his music speaks for itself, but a little contextual information would have been welcome), yet it hardly affects the recommendation for a disc that brings this singular and still largely unheralded composer more fully into focus.” —Richard Whitehouse, Int’l Record Review (UK)

“Intelligent and evocative.” —Sonic Curiosity

“His music is at one and the same time accessible—down to the most elementary component—and crucially impenetrable when the final result is heard. What’s clear right away is that the fruits of Adams’s work introduce a spiritual force of imposing magnitude, so that one instantly tends to link it with powerful natural phenomena or some kind of unknown yet alluring ritual. The four pieces That comprise Red Arc/Blue Veil symbolize a journey of sorts.… Many of these works utilize superimpositions of different rhythmic signatures that materialize into something comparable to the shimmering of a river in under the sun. Essentially, this is another gem from the Californian label for which an artistic misstep or a less than satisfactory release would apparently be considered a deadly sin.” —Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes (Italy)

“Dark Waves…moves through time in a series of swelling and receding sounds, lurking in the lower registers of the pianos for most of the piece. The feeling is one of mesmerizing foreboding.… Among Red Mountains, played here with ferocious commitment by Stephen Drury, is made from granitic shards of chords, always loud and distributed throughout the piano’s range. The piece is marked by the composer’s characteristic use of cross-rhythms, sometimes very clear on the surface of the music, sometimes buried in the texture. It’s an important part of what gives this work its particular power.… The bass drum is one of my favorite instruments.… Qilyuan, which is scored for four of the beasts…includes rolling waves of sound (as in Dark Waves) as well as the cross-rhythms mentioned in regard to Among Red Mountains, with the addition of wonderfully conceived and executed stereo effects, as the sound of the drums moves from speaker to speaker. It would be exciting to hear in performance.… The final piece on this well-performed and sensitively recorded disc is Red Arc/Blue Veil.… It’s a lovely 12-minute meditation on sounds that grow into shimmering objects and then recede. John Luther Adams continues to grow as a composer, and this disc should contribute to his growing stature among active composers.” —Steve Hicken, Sequenza21

“Somewhere in the distance two pianos are playing. Slowly, very slowly, the sound comes towards you, and just as inevitably the sound recedes. This takes twelve and a half minutes. No development, no real movement, but no stasis either. What’s going on? Nothing and everything. Where’s the music going? Nowhere and everywhere. This sound world is our universe. It exists solely for itself. It’s electrifying. So begins Dark Waves, the first track on this new John Luther Adams CD.… Among Red Mountains, for a solo piano, is a study in clusters and opposing registers. Hard and brutal, unrelenting, yet strangely spellbinding and impossible to ignore.… Red Arc/Blue Veil, which gives the CD its title, is, in form, similar to Dark Waves. Starting quietly as a neo-romantic nocturne for piano and vibraphone, it builds in intensity and volume, as the percussionist changes to crotales, and a big climax is built. Then a return to the music of the beginning, piano and vibes, gentle, restrained, beautiful.… All in all, a very exciting issue from a composer who’s been working quietly and methodically for some time and he should be investigated because his music is haunting and quite unforgettable.… Lou Harrison called Adams ‘one of the few important young American composers,’ and he might just be right.” —Bob Briggs, MusicWeb Int’l

“Alaskan composer John Luther Adams (no relation to the other composer John Adams) makes his own kind of music, creating expansive and slow-brewing sonic places with echoes of Minimalism and Ambient. Adams has his own side entry into existing ‘isms,’ evoking the mystery and majesty of nature as much as he dwells in a purely musical realm. On his recent release Red Arc/Blue Veil (Cold Blue), four intriguing pieces combine pianists and percussionists—two each—to swell and recede and encircle harmonic areas. Happy hypnosis is the upshot.” —Josef Woodard, Santa Barbara Independent

“I got completely absorbed during the listening. John Luther Adams captured my attention from the very first.… The center of this music is just inspiration and, like [Raymond] Carver’s writings, surplus has been removed from these compositions. At the same time, despite having no frills, this music has not much of the American minimalists’ influence. Sure, their shadow is there but nothing more than that.… Red Arc/Blue Veil is simple but vibrant, melodic and intense.… This cd is far from wallpaper-music, it goes deep.” —Andrea Ferraris, Chain D.L.K. (Italy)

John Luther Adams’ artistic sound world is a compelling place—one filled with a colorful, curious, cool, and yet passionate series of carefully calibrated and poised sounds produced by everything from acoustic instruments and percussion to electronics. His influences include minimalism, but he primarily has a penchant for huge soundscapes that convey what Alaska’s skies, lands, weather, and light have meant to him in the 20 years he’s lived near Fairbanks. This album offers four big works in that lineage. Dark Waves, for piano duet, surges from soft to explosive and from low to high and back. I found it evocative of both Debussy’s The Sunken Cathedral and the gamelan-inspired works of Colin McPhee, yet with an insistence all its own. Among Red Mountains, performed here by Santa Fe New Music in 2002, is a solo piano tour de force that paints an aural picture of continent-spanning mountain chains with a lot of brilliant banging (and I mean that positively). Qilyuan is a fascinating piece for two bass drums, full of rhythmic intricacies and sonic eruptions that suggest plate tectonics somehow speeded up to a human time scale. The title work, Red Arc/Blue Veil, casts a wide, rainbow-hued spell with its gorgeous mix of piano, vibraphone, and crotales sounds. The performers and engineering are all first-rate. —Craig Smith, The Santa Fe New Mexican

“Red Arc/Blue Veil, the latest from acclaimed minimalist composer John Luther Adams, swirls with the majestic highs and lows of a mountain range.… [T]he album is a soaring, shimmering exploration of texture and tone. The resplendent mood of the album, which is one of incredible scale, is immediately rendered on Dark Waves.… Here, Adams introduces a stabbing, scalar piano melody through a fog of piano drone and pulsating feedback. The piano volleys extend in scope, reaching new heights before crashing down in dramatic rivulets of sound. Among Red Mountains is a formal study of chords that clash and crash together. A challenging composition, it lacks some of the visceral force of Dark Waves but offers more texture in return. Qilyuan is a tour de force of tectonic rhythm, halfway between Japanese Koto and classical timpani. Red Arc/Blue Veil closes this highly recommended album on the same vast panoramic scale as it began.” —Max Ritts, Musicworks (Canada)