John Luther Adams (1953-)
The Place We Began (2008)

John Luther Adams

Mysteriously evocative electro-acoustic works that the composer built from short recorded moments—audio fragments—of his early music. This is not a trip down Memory Lane: In the place we began, Adams has reappropriated and transformed these sonic fragments into completely new works that speak to his current musical interests and directions, especially his recent installation pieces. Adams writes about the album: “Last summer in my studio I discovered several boxes of reel-to-reel tapes that I’d recorded in the early 1970s. Using those ‘found objects,’ I sculpted these new soundscapes from fragments of my past. The tape that got me started was labeled ‘Scrap. Unknown.’ When I listened to it, I could neither tell which direction was forward nor determine its proper playback speed. In both directions and at high and low speeds the sounds were intriguing. After trying it all four ways, I began to superimpose tracks. Then I began exploring the other found tapes. in a room is composed from raw material I recorded on a summer afternoon in 1972. With two cheap speakers and a microphone, I used electro-acoustic feedback to explore the resonant frequencies in a room with hardwood floors and lots of windows. Thirty-six years later (using tools I couldn’t have imagined back then) I shaped that recording’s sounds into a twelve-part motet. at the still point is a tempo canon that sustains the relationships 13/14/15/16 throughout. The piece is made primarily from two tapes I recorded in 1974 on my Fender Rhodes electric piano. in the rain begins with fragments from a recording I made in 1973. That tape was made in a gentle spring shower, during which I set pots and pans out in the yard, adding their metallic voices, one by one, to the sounds of the rain and blue jays. I’ve now re-used those sounds and their spectral after images to create ‘veils’ that rise and fall. the place we began, a second twelve-part motet composed from the 1972 recording used for in a room, closes this cycle of works. Where the first piece rises, the place we began descends into subsonic depths, revealing previously inaudible quavering harmonics.” [CD and folder in jewel case]