By Lawrence Toppman
For 45 minutes Saturday afternoon, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra (CSO) became one with the sensuous music of John Luther Adams. I became one with the primordial sea from which all life emerged eons ago.
And if you’re becoming queasy at the thought of more New Age metaphors, I’ll lay things out simply: This event, the CSO’s first in Blume Studios, proved three important things.
First, Blumenthal Performing Arts’ newest venue can work as a concert space, though seating everyone on the same level rendered the musicians invisible to most of us. That mattered less this time, as we were watching images projected on floor-to-ceiling curtains around the hall.
Second, Charlotte can (for brief periods of time, anyway) elevate itself to the level of a world – no, I can’t make my keys type that adjective. A major cultural center, let’s say.
Third, the orchestra continues to break new ground faster and farther than I remember in all of my 45 years in Charlotte, a fact that will be confirmed when president and CEO David Fisk reveals the 2025-26 season next week. (Yes, I have seen the schedule.)
Some audience members who struggled with Adams’ Pulitzer-winning composition from 2013 might have wished for a different experience. A friend who hoped for Debussy-ian harmonies accompanied by BBC “Blue Planet” imagery should’ve sampled the Seattle Symphony recording that won the 2015 Grammy for Classical Contemporary Composition.
(The N.C. Aquarium at Fort Fisher was on hand to promote its attractions and placed a photo of a voracious shark at the beginning of the online program. Perhaps that helped mislead patrons into expecting a “Neptune’s Greatest Hits” approach to the visual element.)
Adams prefaced his slow-building masterpiece, not to be confused with the hectic sounds of John Adams, with this comment: “Life on this Earth first emerged from the sea. As the polar ice melts and sea level rises, we humans find ourselves facing the prospect that once again we may quite literally become ocean.”
That’s where we began when the lights went down: In vast waters populated by luminous drifting objects I took to be plankton. Slowly, slowly, as golden sunlight came and went and waves roiled above, the sea changed.
Kelp appeared. Corals gathered and solidified into formations, and we dropped into a dim grotto. Eventually, translucent jellyfish floated past – and there, evolution stopped for us. The music rose and fell and rose and fell, creating a hypnotic effect that might have put you to sleep (if it did nothing for you) or lift you into a hyper-aware state, if you responded to it.
This music sounds deceptively simple, even repetitious, because it doesn’t rely on lively effects. Yet Adams uses a large symphony orchestra, anchored by a piano and a celeste who play the entire time, and you can hear variations if you listen for them. (I didn’t, as I already knew the piece and was looking for details in the visual changes.)
Guest conductor Yaniv Dinur’s steady hand steered the orchestra through the shoals, and the CSO program listed 10 designers, engineers and technicians who made the evening possible. I have to give a special shout-out to Fisk, who decided Charlotte needed this experience. Whether you went or not, whether you liked what you heard or not, something game-changing for local classical music went down this weekend.
Credit: Genesis Photography/Courtesy Charlotte Symphony