The Space Where You Go to Listen: In Search of An Ecology of Music

by John Luther Adams
Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, CT, 2009
180 pp., illus, 17 b/w, 4 col. Paper, $24.95/£21.50
ISBN: 978-081956903-5.

Reviewed by Franc Chamberlain
University College Cork
Republic of Ireland

Franc.chamberlain@gmail.com

John Luther Adams' book, The Space Where You Go to Listen , is a textual and, to a lesser extent, visual documentation of the process of creating his audio-visual installation of the same name.

Installed at the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska, Adams' work takes real time data from a number of seismic, magnetometer, and meteorological stations across the state and transforms them into patterns of sound and light. It is an open-ended work, deeply rooted in Adams' 'abiding love for Alaska' (142), yet he also imagines the possibility of a series of linked works established in different parts of the world.

The book is divided into three main sections. The first is a series of short pieces in which Adams situates The Space Where You Go To Listen in the context of his other works and in relation to his thinking on time, place, computers, and sound. This is a useful orientation for the major part of the book that is entitled 'A Composer's Journal'. It's not clear whether the section is the full journal or edited selections from Adams' journal. If the latter, then some indication of how the selection was made would have been useful. Nonetheless, the journal documents Adams' creative process between December 2003 and March 2006 in an engaging manner that links personal process to the shifting of the seasons. The final section of the book is a series of brief reflections together with a number of technical details.

The Space Where You Go To Listen is an intimate, passionate and inspiring book fuelled by a belief that music can 'contribute to the awakening of our ecological understanding' (1). The creative journey, however, leads Adams to explore new technologies and approaches until, by the last journal entry: 'I'm still not sure just what The Place is. I'm not even sure that it's music' (142).