John Luther Adams

Radiolab

WNYC Studios

Natural Sciences, History, Documentary, Science, Society & Culture

4.6 • 44.5K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2014

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What's the soundtrack for the end of the world? We go looking for an answer. When Jad started to compose music for our live show Apocalyptical, he immediately thought of John Luther Adams. Adams' symphony “Become Ocean,” rooted in the sounds of nature, is elemental, tectonic, and unstoppable. It seemed a natural fit for our consideration of the (spoiler alert) extinction of the dinosaurs. In this piece, Jad introduces Robert to a special on Adams from a podcast called Meet the Composer. Through interviews and snippets of his music, it captures all the forces at play in Adam's work and reveals the dark majesty of Adams' take on the apocalypse.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Wait, you're listening...
0:03.1	Okay.
0:04.4	All right.
0:05.6	Okay.
0:07.0	All right.
0:08.5	You're listening to Radio Lab.
0:11.4	Radio Lab.
0:11.9	From WNY...
0:13.9	C.
0:14.8	See?
0:15.1	Yeah.
0:16.5	And NPR.
0:17.8	NPR.
0:17.8	Okay. And NPR.
0:40.3	Okay, so Robert, you know that, like, talking about music in a way that's compelling can be kind of hard.
0:41.0	Very hard.
0:41.4	Yeah.
0:42.8	Particularly the music you like.
0:43.3	Yeah, exactly.
0:45.2	It's really hard to build a bridge.
0:48.9	And so when people do it well, I just feel like you've got to give them props.
0:54.1	And I just ran into a really great podcast that I think everyone should be listening to.
	...

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