Sila: The Breath Of The World - John Luther Adams et al (2022)
Adams won a pulitzer prize for his piece Become Ocean, with its musicians divided into three sometimes clashing, sometimes complementary units. From what I’ve read, this has a similar structure, except that those cells are quite distinct. The JACK string quartet plays against a choir, a percussion ensemble, and a chamber orchestra.
It’s all designed for the concert hall, and honestly–like a lot of modern concert music–it loses a little something being condensed down to single stereo mix. I don’t know if spatial audio or some other revolution would help that, but the fact is you’re kind of hearing a photocopy of what was originally produced.
But it’s all still glorious and sweeping and grand. Over the course of the piece the drones and washes of sound start to sound more distinct from each other, and when new colors emerge it’s quite exciting.
