Awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and described by the New Yorker’s Alex Ross as “...the loveliest apocalypse in musical history”, John Luther Adams’ majestic orchestral work Become Ocean is a thrilling exploration of depth, turbulence, eerie silence and ultimately enveloping calm. Performed by the Seattle Symphony under the baton of Ludovic Morlot, the music casts an expressive arc that’s by turns intimate and expansive - an ebbing and flowing sonic journey that finds the composer testing the very limits of his imagination.
“The title is stolen from John Cage”, Adams reveals, “from a little mesostic poem that he wrote in honor of Lou Harrison. He compares Lou’s music to a river in delta, with all these different influences and currents, coming together in a big beautiful sweep of music. And in the last line of the poem, Cage writes, ‘Listening to it, we become ocean.’ I’ve always been struck by what a beautiful image that is.”
William Schuman Award
