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  • perc/pf/electronics
  • 12 min

Programme Note

Red Arc/Blue Veil was the first of my “color field” pieces, exploring the geometry of what Kandinsky called “those inner sounds that are the life of the colors”.

As in much of my music, I imagined the entire ensemble (piano, percussion, and electronic “aura”) as a single instrument, and the entire piece as a single complex sonority. The processed sounds are derived directly from the acoustical instruments.

In Red Arc/Blue Veil, the electronic sounds are layered in tempo relationships of 3, 5 and 7, while the piano and mallet percussion trace a single arc, rising and falling from beginning to end.

Red Arc/Blue Veil was commissioned and premiered by Ensemble Sirius.

John Luther Adams

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