Messiaen: Des canyons aux étoiles... ("From the Canyons to the Stars...") Seattle Symphony & Ludovic Morlot

• Olivier Messiaen (1908 - 1992): Part One:
• 1 Messiaen: Part One: Le desert (“The Desert”) (Stereo SR) 04:10
• 2 Messiaen: Part One: Les orioles (“The Orioles”) (Stereo SR) 06:10
• 3 Messiaen: Part One: Ce qui est écrit sur les étoiles (“That Which Is Written in the Stars...”) (Stereo SR) 06:15
• 4 Messiaen: Part One: Le cossyphe d'Heuglin (“The White-Browed Robin-Chat”) (Stereo SR) 04:15
• 5 Messiaen: Part One: Cedar Breaks et le don de crainte (“Cedar Breaks and the Gift of Awe”) (Stereo SR) 07:16
• Part Two:
• 6 Messiaen: Part Two: Appel interstellaire (“Interstellar Call”) (Stereo SR) 05:54
• 7 Messiaen: Part Two: Bryce Canyon et les rochers rouge-orange (“Bryce Canyons and the Red-Orange Rocks”) (Stereo SR) 13:50
• Part Three:
• 8 Messiaen: Part Three: Les ressuscités et le chant de l'étoile Aldébaran (“The Resurrected and the Song of the Star Aldebaran”) (Stereo SR) 08:50
• 9 Messiaen: Part Three: Le moqueur polyglotte (“The Mockingbird”) (Stereo SR) 09:32
• 10 Messiaen: Part Three: La grive des bois (“The Wood Thrush”) (Stereo SR) 04:57
• 11 Messiaen: Part Three: Omao, Leiothrix, Elepaio, Shama (“Hawaiian Thrush, Pekin Robin, Monarch Flycatcher, Shama Thrush”) (Stereo SR) 09:10
• 12 Messiaen: Part Three: Zion Park et la Cité celeste (“Zion Park and the Celestial City”) (Stereo SR) 10:03
• Total Runtime 01:30:22

Info for Messiaen: Des canyons aux étoiles... ("From the Canyons to the Stars...")

John Luther Adams’ Become Desert is a remarkable expansion on the ideas he developed for his Pulitzer-winning (and Grammy-winning) work Become Ocean. While not necessarily a “sequel” in the literal sense, the recording certainly shares multiple elements with its predecessor — including, most significantly, the renewal of Adams’ creative partnership with conductor Ludovic Morlot and the Seattle Symphony.

In his 2018 essay for the New York Times, Adams prepares us for listening to Become Desert with a map, of sorts, to help us find the state of “swimming in light” that the music is meant to convey. Along the way, “You begin to feel that this music you had thought was suspended in time is slowly leading you somewhere, pulling you somewhere. It continues upward, rising with inevitable force, like the wind or the light.

"Composer John Adams, who lived in Alaska for many years, has written distinctive scores that both evoke the natural world and seem to draw the listener inward with their subtle, detailed soundscapes. Adams' Become Ocean won the Pulitzer Prize in 2014, and Become Desert, a single movement of about 40 minutes, is something of a sequel to that work, inspired by Adams' new home in the Sonoran Desert of New Mexico. Adams' music is difficult to pin down to any one subgenre. It is slow-moving and trancelike, but you wouldn't call it minimalist; it is never static, and generally has no regular pulse. Instead, it is filled with small details that hover at the edge of consciousness, and in turn, relates to the larger programmatic natural context of the work. Become Desert receives its recorded premiere here from the musicians who played Become Ocean, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and Chorale (there is a fascinatingly slight choral part) under conductor Ludovic Morlot. If you haven't heard Adams' music, try this out: you are transported into the world of the music, whose 40 minutes seem to go by rapidly as the almost inaudible finale unrolls. This is music to stand with Aaron Copland's evocations of the American desert. Highly recommended." (James Manheim, AMG)

Seattle Symphony
Ludovic Morlot, music director

Seattle Symphony
Founded in 1903, the Seattle Symphony is one of America’s leading symphony orchestras and is internationally acclaimed for its innovative programming and extensive recording history. Under the leadership of Music Director Ludovic Morlot since September 2011, the Symphony is heard live from September through July by more than 300,000 people. It performs in one of the finest modern concert halls in the world — the acoustically superb Benaroya Hall — in downtown Seattle. Its extensive education and community-engagement programs reach over 100,000 children and adults each year. The Seattle Symphony has a deep commitment to new music, commissioning many works by living composers each season, including John Luther Adams’ Become Ocean, which won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. The orchestra has made more than 140 recordings and has received 18 Grammy nominations, two Emmy Awards and numerous other accolades. In 2014 the Symphony launched its in-house recording label, Seattle Symphony Media.

Ludovic Morlot
As the Seattle Symphony’s Music Director, Ludovic Morlot has been received with extraordinary enthusiasm by musicians and audiences alike, who have praised him for his deeply musical interpretations, his innovative programming and his focus on community collaboration. From 2012 to 2014 Morlot was also Chief Conductor of La Monnaie, one of Europe’s most prestigious opera houses.

In the U.S., Ludovic Morlot has conducted the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra and Pittsburgh Symphony. Additionally, he has conducted the Budapest Festival Orchestra, Czech Philharmonic, Danish National Symphony Orchestra, Dresden Staatskapelle, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich.

Trained as a violinist, Morlot studied conducting at the Royal Academy of Music in London and then at the Royal College of Music as recipient of the Norman del Mar Conducting Fellowship. Ludovic was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in 2014 in recognition of his significant contributions to music. He is Chair of Orchestral Conducting Studies at the University of Washington School of Music.

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