Come Hear the Song of the Earth
June 26, 2008 | Tags: Art, Music, UAF
Fairbanks musician John Luther Adams was recently profiled by The New Yorker magazine in an article from Alex Ross titled Song of the Earth. The piece focuses largely on an Adams creation for the University of Alaska Museum of the North.
On a recent trip to the Alaskan interior, I didn’t get to see the aurora borealis, but I did, in a way, hear it. At the Museum of the North, on the grounds of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, the composer John Luther Adams has created a sound-and-light installation called “The Place Where You Go to Listen”—a kind of infinite musical work that is controlled by natural events occurring in real time.
You’ll find both artist and creation fascinating, as Ross first describes the place:
The first day I was there, “The Place” was subdued, though it cast a hypnotic spell. Checking the Alaskan data stations on my laptop, I saw that geomagnetic activity was negligible. Some minor seismic activity in the region had set off the bass frequencies, but it was a rather opaque ripple of beats, suggestive of a dance party in an underground crypt…
When I arrived the next day, just before noon, “The Place” was jumping. A mild earthquake in the Alaska Range, measuring 2.99 on the Richter scale, was causing the Earth Drums to pound more loudly and go deeper in register. (If a major earthquake were to hit Fairbanks, “The Place,” if it survived, would throb to the frequency 24.27Hz, an abyssal tone that Adams associates with the rotation of the earth.) Even more spectacular were the high sounds showering down from speakers on the ceiling. On the Web site of the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute, aurora activity was rated 5 on a scale from 0 to 9, or “active.” This was sufficient to make the Aurora Bells come alive.
And the man who made The Place Where You Go to Listen a reality:
Adams blends in well with the proudly scruffy characters who populate the diners and bars of Fairbanks. Tall and rail-thin, his handsomely weathered face framed by a short beard, he bears a certain resemblance to Clint Eastwood, and speaks in a similarly soft, husky voice. He’s not unworldly—he travels frequently to New York, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and other cultural capitals—but he is happiest when he goes on extended camping trips into the wilderness, especially to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He exudes a regular-guy coolness that is somewhat unusual in contemporary composers.
Be sure to visit our world class Museum of the North on your trip to Fairbanks.
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