John Luther Adams - Become Ocean - A challenge for one's imagination

 

Massively inspired by nature, and especially the landscape of Alaska, John Luther Adams’s pieces target on people’s awareness towards environmental issues. He incorporates serious environmental messages concerning climate change within his pieces, and aims to sensitize people in terms of their own responsibility for a sustainable planet. His revolutionary approach to translate real-time data streams from geophysical events into sounds via a computer program enables people to experience vibrations of the natural world. Adams perceives noise as received messages from the world that connects us to everything around us. Adams created the term “sonic geography”, whereby he aims at listeners’ limits of their imagination.  

His piece “Become Ocean” is a thrilling exploration of the sea. The orchestra is divided into three groups that are spatially separated. Even as a less experienced listener, one might perceive the instruments’ ubiquity. Right from the start, I perceived a steady vibration that made me feel small and uncomfortable, because I had the picture of an endless ocean in my mind. Those first few moments seemed to me like a warning that Adams tried to convey: Respect the ocean. When the first sounds of a harp appeared, I pictured myself getting pulled undersea. The image of being underwater is supported by the vibration which is still present. I found myself diving deeper and deeper into the ocean, because the sounds of the wind instruments get louder, whereas the sound of the harp mitigates. The assembled pressure fades at the point when only a few instruments are played, and intensifies when many instruments are played simultaneously. At some point, I was not able to constitute the number of different instruments played anymore. However, perceiving the piece as a whole without paying attention to specific instruments made the listening experience even more intense. Frequent shifting of pressure, sound volume, and speed truly visualize the transcendence of the ocean. Those shifts in music can be compared with changing tides, weather, temperature, depth, and even animals the ocean possesses. One moment you might feel safe, when suddenly the tides change and you find yourself in a horrendous storm. Especially the climax of the piece illustrates the unpredictability of the ocean, because the rather calm, comfortable mood rapidly shifted towards a perceived aggressive, turbulent phase.

Just like the ever-flowing ocean, the piece manages to transform, but harmonizes throughout. There is no steady state at all, which makes the overall experience electrifying and adventurous. The very first moment I had the picture of the ocean in my mind, I never actually lost it. I sincerely felt connected to the ocean. The name of the piece made me wonder what Adams tried to express, because imagining to become the ocean oneself seemed unrealistic to me. Nevertheless, I felt connected and managed to picture different facets of the ocean. Throughout the whole piece, I felt like being surrounded and overwhelmed by all the instruments, just like a wave crashing onto me, pulling me underwater, and flushing me back out to the beach. In my opinion, the enormous variety of sound sequences were truly fascinating and illustrated the majesty of the ocean very well.