John Luther Adams (1953-)
Three High Places (2007), for solo double bass
, Darkness and Scattered Light (2023), Three Nocturnes (2022)

Robert Black

Darkness and Scattered Light is an album that presents three of Adams’s hauntingly beautiful and virtuosic works for the double bass—two solos and the title work for five basses—written for and performed by the late double bassist extraordinaire Robert Black. Adams writes about the three pieces: “Three High Places contains no normal stopped tones (created by pressing a string against the fingerboard of the instrument). Instead, all the sounds are natural harmonics or open strings. If I could’ve found a way to make this music without touching the instrument at all, I would have. . . . Written for five double basses (on this recording all parts are played by Robert Black), Darkness and Scattered Light traces long melodic lines across harmonic arcs [representing] midnight to noon and back to midnight, on the winter solstice in an imaginary place. . . . While Three High Places is composed entirely on the harmonic series, Three Nocturnes is grounded entirely in the subharmonic series.” Upon hearing this album, noted composer David Lang commented, “This is one of the most beautiful albums I have heard in years. And so emotional. It seems strange that an album about the vastness of nature should be so human, and so emotionally resonant. As the music goes deeper into exploring the stark, mysterious slowness of the natural world it becomes clear just how little this world cares about what we think about it. Nature doesn’t need us—the majesty of this music reflects our smallness back to us. It is a humbling, devastating kind of beauty.” [CD in 6-panel wallet]