Strange Birds Passing

From Wind Repertory Project
John Luther Adams

John Luther Adams


Subtitle: For Flute Choir


General Info

Year: 1983 / 2003
Duration: c. 6:35
Difficulty: (see Ratings for explanation)
Publisher: Taiga Press, through Presto Music
Cost: Score and Parts (print) - $22.00


Instrumentation

Full Score
C Piccolo I-II
Flute I-II-III
Alto Flute I-II
Bass Flute


Errata

None discovered thus far.


Program Notes

For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home -- an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth.

Living for almost 40 years in northern Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970s and into the '80s, he worked full time as an environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music....he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and many other honors.

…Adams brings the sense of wonder that we feel outdoors into the concert hall…he employs music as a way to reclaim our connections with place, wherever we may be.

… If we can imagine a culture and a society in which we each feel more deeply responsible for our own place in the world, then we just may be able to bring that culture and that society into being.

Composers have for centuries attempted to convey bird song in music. John L. Adams has approached the task differently than Beethoven with his gilded cage birds or Messiaen with his wild ones. One senses Adams is trying to capture the soul of being a bird -- what it is to soar and circle, to move as the breeze dictates. In Strange Birds Passing, his repeated figures, using the same pitches in floating arpeggios working in easy counterpoint, are as a flock of birds whose wings flap in the same way but each in their own space.

- Program Note from New England Conservatory Wind Ensemble concert program, 10 November 2022


This work was composed for Dorli McWayne and The Fairbanks Flutists.


Media


State Ratings

None discovered thus far.


Performances

To submit a performance please join The Wind Repertory Project


Works for Winds by This Composer


Resources

  • Adams, J. (2015). Strange Birds Passing: For Flute Choir [score]. Taiga Press: Fairbanks, Alas.