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Darkness and Scattered Light: Düsseldorf Festival
Sep 26 2025
20:00
34OST
Düsseldorf, Germany
Cost: 25,00€

The double bass is an underrated instrument. It plays far back in the orchestra and rarely appears as a solo instrument. Even Patrick Süskind's famous play "The Double Bass" didn't exactly flatter the bass's image. It's high time for more attention! Not just one, but eight basses are now in the spotlight, demonstrating their tremendous expressive potential and opening up never-before-heard soundscapes. It's as if one were witnessing the Big Bang of music. Experience powerful, [...]

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untouched: PULSE
Sep 27 2025
20:00
Galerie Rabus
Bremen, Germany
Cost: € 13,16-23,68

The progressive string quartet PULSE presents branching

In branching, we devote ourselves entirely to our habitat: experiences of nature, mountains, growth, branching patterns: these themes form the basis of the compositions by John Luther Adams, inti figgis-vizueta, Christian Vásquez and Luis Fernando Amaya. We survey the American continent from north to south: from Alaska, via Mexico and the Andes to Tierra del Fuego. [...]

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The Wind in High Places; Lines Made by Walking: JACK Quartet
Sep 28 2025
18:00
Église du Bouclier
Strasbourg, France
Cost: 6-26 €

JACK Quartet introduces us to the work of John Luther Adams, soundscape composer and ardent environmentalist.

A surveyor of wide-open spaces, from northern Alaska where he lived for much of his life to the American and South American deserts today, the man who was initially an environmental activist in the 1970s and 1980s devoted himself to composition late in life. Almost unknown in France, John Luther Adams is one of the most original composers of his generation. His works, [...]

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Become Ocean: BBC Symphony Orchestra
Oct 08 2025
19:30
Barbican Hall
London, UK
Cost: from £15

Become Ocean: Dalia Stasevska conducts John Luther Adams’s 21st century cult classic.

Listening, we become ocean…engulfed in sound, immersed in nature, transformed by the depth and wonder of elements that might (or might not) be beyond our control. Dalia Stasevska conducts one of the defining masterpieces of our century: John Luther Adams’s huge, haunting Become Ocean.

'It may be the loveliest apocalypse in musical history' declared Alex Ross, who [...]

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Canticles of the Sky: Fitzroy String Quartet
Oct 12 2025
15:00
Holy Trinity Church
Ripon, UK
Cost: £20

The award-winning Fitzroy String Quartet makes a welcome return to open our season with an afternoon of captivating chamber music, with moments of intimate expression and vibrant melody.

Bringing together the minimalism of Philip Glass and John Adams and Jessie Montgomery’s American dance like folk idioms, with Dvorak’s homage to the Bohemian musical traditions of his homeland, this promises to be a concert full of lyrical energy.

Philip Glass: [...]

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Crossing Open Ground: Liquid Music
Oct 25 2025
14:00
Snow Canyon State Park
Ivins, UT, USA

Directed by Dimitri Chamblas and Nadia Sirota
With Nathalie Joachim, Sidney Hopson, C.J. Camerieri and Trever Hagen
Produced by Liquid Music Presented by Center for the Arts at Kayenta October 25, 2025 Snow Canyon State Park, Southern Utah

Environmentalist composer John Luther Adams’s Crossing Open Ground, an outdoor work for winds, brass and percussion, offers an opportunity to rediscover and reconsecrate place—an invitation to listen to the older, deeper [...]

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The Wind in High Places: Ligeti Quartet
Nov 27 2025
19:30
Milton Court Concert Hall
London, UK
Cost: from £15

The remarkable Ligeti Quartet traces the shifting contours of memory, nature, and change, through music by Kaija Saariaho, Cassandra Miller, John Luther Adams and many more.

Kaija Saariaho’s Terra Memoria reflects on memory and change, evoking landscapes both personal and physical, while Wadada Leo Smith’s String Quartet No. 5 (In the Diaspora: Earthquakes and Sunrise Missions) conjures the forces of upheaval and renewal. In Warblework, Cassandra Miller [...]

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Nunataks: Margaret Leng Tan
Dec 04 2025
19:30
Littlefield Concert Hall, Mills College
Oakland, CA, USA
Cost: $65.87

On Thursday December 4, 2025, at Mills College at Northeastern University in OaklandOther Minds welcomes Singaporean avant-garde pianist and toy pianist Margaret Leng Tan to present And No Birds Sing, her “personal endeavor to call attention to climate change and the dire consequences of remaining passive in the face of an unfolding universal catastrophe.” Named for the [...]

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Sky with the Four Suns: Manchester Collective
Feb 08 2026
19:00
The Hall, Aviva Studios
Manchester, UK
Cost: £25

Enter a realm flooded with light and sound with music by Arvo Pärt, Benjamin Britten, Henry Purcell, Mica Levi, Jasmine Morris and John Luther Adams

The Alaskan wilderness and the Arctic sky is where night and day steadily unfold with a special kind of magic. These horizons stretch far and wide across the nature-infused music of John Luther Adams. His ‘Canticles of the Sky’ for string quartet is stark, bright and expansive. It takes inspiration [...]

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Become Ocean: Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra
Feb 18 2026
20:00
Tchaikovsky Concert Hall
Moscow, Russia

Yaroslav Timofeev, leading, author of the series

Russian National Youth Symphony Orchestra

Fyodor Lednev, conductor

[...]

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Become River: London Philharmonic Orchestra
Mar 21 2026
18:30
Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre
London, UK
Cost: £7.5-45

The music

John Luther Adams Become River (16’)
Clarice Assad Terra: Concerto for Bassoon and Orchestra (European premiere) (22’) Piazzolla The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires (arr. Desyatnikov) (with live dance) (26’)

The performers

  • Pablo Rus Broseta conductor
  • Jonathan Davies bassoon*
  • Alice Ivy-Pemberton violin

Explore land, water and air before arriving in the city of [...]

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An Atlas of Deep Time: Louisville Orchestra
Apr 24 2026
11:00
Whitney Hall at The Kentucky Center
Louisville, KY, USA

Teddy Abrams, conductor

Anthony Green, World Premiere (Louisville Orchestra Creators Corp)
Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
John Luther Adams, An Atlas of Deep Time

A century after its debut, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue still crackles with energy—its opening clarinet glissando an unmistakable call to the thrill of jazz-age America. Teddy Abrams leads the Louisville Orchestra in this timeless fusion of classical and [...]

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An Atlas of Deep Time: Louisville Orchestra
Apr 25 2026
19:30
Whitney Hall at The Kentucky Center
Louisville, KY, USA

Teddy Abrams, conductor

Anthony Green, World Premiere (Louisville Orchestra Creators Corp)
Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue
John Luther Adams, An Atlas of Deep Time

A century after its debut, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue still crackles with energy—its opening clarinet glissando an unmistakable call to the thrill of jazz-age America. Teddy Abrams leads the Louisville Orchestra in this timeless fusion of classical and [...]

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Become Ocean: Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra
May 02 2026
19:30
Jack Singer Concert Hall
Calgary, Canada
Cost: $32-94

Take the plunge into huge orchestral sound as the Calgary Phil and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra come together to perform John Luther Adams' Become Ocean, a haunting work that evokes an unstoppable tidal surge. They also join forces to play Holst's enthralling orchestral mood pictures inspired by the astrological significance of the planets and how they may [...]

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Adams's swelling orchestral work may be the loveliest apocalypse in musical history. - Alex Ross, New Yorker
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