John Luther Adams The Wind in High Places Jack Quartet Jensen - Cb0041 - Contemporary

The Wind in High Places is an album containing three of Adams’s serenly powerful recent string works: (1) The Wind in High Places, a three-movement string quartet commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Theodore Front Musical Literature, performed by JACK Quartet; (2) Canticles of the Sky, a four-movement piece for four cello choirs, performed by the 48-member Northwestern University Cello Ensemble; and (3) Dream of the Canyon Wren, a single-movement string quartet written for and performed by JACK. All three of these works share certain features: harmonies based in the overtone series, slowly changing polyrhythmic textures, and arch forms. Both of the string quartets are virtuosic, The Wind built solely from natural harmonics and open strings and Dream built from overlapping streams of glissandos. As this music unfolds, the listener is slowly taken up in a series of sonic waves that usually start from almost nothing and grow to great richness (increasing in density of instrumental voices and number of concurrent pitches), while often simultaneously shifting the piece’s or movement’s general tessitura (e.g., low and soft to high and loud or high and soft to low and loud). This sort of wave motion may occur once per movement or a few times per movement, often reaching a very expressive sense of ecstasy at each crest. [CD in 6-panel wallet]