Music From Other Minds

Program 503: Everything That Rises

KALW Broadcast Date: February 16, 2018 | Host: Richard Friedman

John Luther Adams’ new string quartet, Everything That Rises was recently released on Cold Blue Music. Commissioned by SFJAZZ and the JACK Quartet, Everything That Rises is an ever-in-motion virtuosic just-intonation work built of a series of 16 ascending musical “clouds.” Its pitches are derived from the harmonics of the piece’s subsonic fundamental tone (C0).

The composer writes: “Everything That Rises, my fourth string quartet, grew out of Sila: The Breath of the World—a concert-length choral/orchestral work I composed on a rising series of 16 harmonic clouds. This music traverses that same territory, but in a much more melodic way. Each musician is a soloist, playing throughout. Time floats and 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.”

Program Audio

30-Second Spot