• Tracks

Adams, a Pulitzer-winning composer, writes music that draws much of it's inspiration from earth's primal forms and forces. These large, elemental concepts are never far below the surface of the music on Four Thousand Holes. The two works that comprise this album-constructions that grew from a blending of process and intuition-maintain a tight focus on music's inherent sensuality. The title piece, a bold, wonderfully quirky work, amasses and blends multiple tempo streams of simple triads with electro-acoustic "auras" to create a sense of beautifully suspended time. The other piece,... and bells remembered... for percussion quintet, spins forth a quiet and gently clangorous world of ringing tones. "I can't stop listening to John Luther Adams's Four Thousand Holes." [The New Yorker critic and author Alex Ross, Twitter] "John Luther Adams is a major figure and this disc-small but perfectly formed-is a notable addition to his discography." [International Record Review] "Four Thousand Holes may simply be Adams's best work to-date.... So far, 2011 has had it's lion's share of exquisite recordings, but this disc stands out as required listening... Album of the Week." [WQXR/Q2] "Despite a rather majestic climax, Four Thousand Holes unfolds at a measured pace, like a kind of contemplative walk in the woods in which the landscape changes slowly but dramatically over time. There is a spontaneous feel that belies the careful craftsmanship. Drury's piano part is made up exclusively of chords based on major and minor triads, with Deal's vibraphone and orchestra bells adding an extra sonic glitter. On top of it all, Adams generates a processed electronic 'aura,' derived from the piano lines, and it spreads out like a canopy of sound: dense, rich, and enveloping." [Josh Shea, Boston Globe] "In Four Thousand Holes... John Luther Adams explores an extended progression of radiant, overlapping triads glowing with a resigned majesty until they support a slowly ascending line leading to an ecstatic climax that caps off it's 32-minute journey. The effect is meditative and spiritual, absorbing, and probably in it's essence more overwhelming than it's modest scoring allows." [American Record Guide]