by Ben Hogwood

There is something very elemental about the music of John Luther Adams, and witnessing Become Ocean live made a very strong impression. Listening to it literally repoints your brain, as I discovered back in 2018 with the London Contemporary Orchestra.

The composer’s own words, from the page dedicated to Become Ocean at his publisher, Wise Music, are as follows:

“Over the years my orchestral music has become simpler and more expansive.

Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing (1991-95) contains four different musical textures. In the White Silence (1998) has three. For Lou Harrison (2002) reduces this to just two.

In Dark Waves (2007), I finally got to one. When I first heard that piece I began to wonder if I could sustain a similar sound for a longer span of time. The result is Become Ocean, a meditation on the vast, deep and mysterious tides of existence.

The title is borrowed from a mesostic verse that John Cage wrote in honor of Lou Harrison’s birthday. Likening Harrison’s music to a river in delta, Cage writes:

LiStening to it
we becOme
oceaN.

Life on this earth first emerged from the sea. And 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.”

Published post no.2,978 – Tuesday 11 August 2026