SFJAZZ presents U.S. Premiere of John Luther Adams’ Everything That Rises featuring JACK Quartet
Robert M. Miner Auditorium
SFJAZZ Center, 205 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA 94102 USA
7:30 PM, Friday, July 28, 2017

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!

John Luther Adams: Everything That Rises (2017; U.S. Premiere; ca. 56 min)

[7:37 PM lights down, announcements from Randall Kline]
[7:44 PM comments from John Luther Adams]
[7:48 PM JACK out]

1. [7:49 PM] John Luther Adams: Everything That Rises [work ends 8:46 PM, bows and then off]
   [JACK and JLA return twice for additional bows and applause, but that's all]

JACK Quartet

• Christopher Otto: violin;
• Ari Streisfeld: violin;
• John Pickford Richards: viola;
• Kevin McFarland: cello.

A coming attractions page hosted by Adams' publisher includes his abstract for this piece, and the ushers at SFJAZZ handed out a slightly longer note as we entered the hall:

“I never imagined I would write a string quartet. Then I heard the JACK Quartet, and I understood how I might be able to make the medium my own. The result was the Wind in High Places – a twenty-minute work composed entirely on natural harmonics and open strings.

Over the next few years, two more quartets followed. The second quartet, untouched, is a further exploration of the Aeolian sound world of the first. Then, in Canticles of the Sky, the musicians finally touch the fingerboards of their instruments.
And now comes Everything That Rises.

This fourth quartet is more expansive, both in time and space. It grows out of Sila: The Breath of the World—a performance-length choral-orchestral work composed on a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds.

Everything That Rises traverses this same territory, but in a much more melodic way.

Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. They surround the audience. Time floats.

Over the course of an hour, the lines spin out—always rising—in acoustically perfect intervals that grow progressively smaller as they spiral upward…until the music dissolves into the soft noise of the bows, sighing.”

Before the performance last night, JLA said much the same thing to us, though he embellished the telling with additional detail that I failed to write down.

As you might guess from the description, Everything That Rises is an utterly unconventional piece. Like many of Adams other works, it seems to inhabit an inhuman otherworld – in this case, an alien sphere populated by airy spirits. I disagree with Adam's comment that this is a melodic work: the piece is much too abstract to admit that epithet, and there's zero chance that anyone would have walked out last night whistling a tune they picked up from their close listening. Unless maybe the listener was a djinn or a wayward sprite summoned to materialize in the hall by the vibrations of the quartet strings.

The work is certainly true to the description, and at nearly an hour, listening carefully will no doubt be a trying task for many listeners. I managed to make it about 35 minutes before growing restless: it's a good thing that I could stand up from my seat without disturbing anyone!

I'm not sure if Adams' comment about 'a rising series of sixteen harmonic clouds' applies to Everything That Rises: It seemed to me that each 'cloud cycle' lasted only a few minutes. Fitting sixteen into the 57 minute performance implies a 5-6 minute cycle … about double the length that I perceived.

As for “They surround the audience”? Bunk! Pure bunk! JACK was set up onstage in the regular, circular arrangement common to most string quartet performances. Had I known that would be the case, I probably would have bought a ticket in a seat up close – the better to hear the overtones and the bowing and scraping. As it was, from my perch in the top back of the hall, the last 3-4 minutes of the work were more or less inaudible. I could see one or the other performers fingering or moving the bow, but nothing was audible over the noise of the hall's HVAC rumble. Bummer! Guess I need to do a better job at recognizing marketing hype and differentiating it from useful information. Fooled me good this time!

Jeff Kaliss posted a really nice promo article about John and his work at SFCV.

Joshua Kosman got his two cents in via a promo article with SFGate.

Back to the previous event! ☸ Up to the 2017 yearbox! ☸ Up to the 2017 event list! ☸ On to the next event!