Inuksuit

Our command of Inuit is not what it should be, but here at GORP headquarters we know a better deal when we see one.  On Sunday afternoon, in a performance that is free and open to the public, the University of Richmond will stage John Luther Adams’s ecological composition Inuksuit at the Jenkins Greek Theatre, just above Westhampton Lake.  GORP will be there – and not at Great Shiplock Park – because, well, this sounds like a whole lot more fun than picking up trash:

Thoreau recorded the momentous social and environmental changes of the industrial revolution through describing the interactions of natural and man-made sound: the “music” of the wind on the telegraph wire, the interaction between birdsong and train whistles, the play of wind and whirring sawmills. For Thoreau, close listening gave these ‘found sounds’ the vividness of musical events. The Alaska-based composer John Luther Adams (b. 1953) composes the momentous social and environmental changes of our era, documenting climate change and cultural loss in sound itself.

In collaboration with the Grammy Award winning Eighth Blackbird ensemble, the University of Richmond will stage Adams’ monumental ecological composition -Inuksuit (an Inuit word meaning ‘in the capacity of the human’).  The 90-minute composition, scored for 99 drummers, will be performed in the wooded area of the campus along Westhampton Lake. Composed to blend (and confuse) the sounds of nature and humanity, Adams invites us to hear our world as Thoreau heard Walden.

The performance starts at 4:00 p.m. and ends at 5:30.  Parking is available at the Modlin Center for the Arts (for directions click here).

Afterward, for those so inclined, we will make our way to Palani Drive for dinner.

Hope you can join us.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden