Name: John Luther Adams's INUKSUIT
Start: 2024-10-06T15:00:00-05:00
Location: Iowa City City Park

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
On June 29, 2009, 18 intrepid percussionists premiered John Luther Adams’s Inuksuit at the “Roots and Rhizomes” percussion course at the Banff Centre for the Arts. Inuksuit, designed to be performed outdoors with as many as 99 percussionists, is aimed at exploring the sound of a place. The percussionists move while playing, and the audience can move with them or find a shady spot to sit and listen to the whole. Through the music, the sounds of the place assert themselves—birds, wind, water, children playing. At the premiere only six intrepid listeners gathered in a driving rain in the high Canadian Rockies. Now, on its 15th anniversary, audiences are no longer so small. After hundreds of performances on five continents, Inuksuit comes to Iowa City where Schick will be joined by nearly a hundred percussionists from around the Midwest to celebrate this music and its legacy.
The goal of Inuksuit has always been to focus our ears on the world, and by doing so, to bring the lives of humans closer to the life of our beautiful and scarred planet. In Iowa City, itself a place radically shaped by natural events, Inuksuit will come alive again and will help us hear the world and each other. It has become an anthem: for humans who wish to live in greater harmony with our planet; for musicians who believe that music can happen far from concert stages, and for listeners who wish to find beauty in the small sounds of everyday life.
What is INUKSUIT?:
Inuksuit — a 70-minute piece — has been described by the New York Times as “the ultimate environmental piece,” while the New Yorker’s Alex Ross hailed it as “one of the most rapturous experiences of my listening life.”
The performance on Sunday, October 6 will feature roughly over 100 percussionists dispersed throughout Iowa City’s City Park and along the banks of the Iowa River.
“Each performance of Inuksuit is different,” Adams explains, “determined not just by the ensemble but by the topology and vegetation of the site — even by the songs of the local birds. The musicians are dispersed throughout a large area, and the listeners are free to discover their own individual listening points, which actively shapes their experience. This work is intended to expand our awareness of the never-ending music of the world in which we live, transforming seemingly empty space into a more fully experienced place.”
Join us for the pre-concert talk on October 6 at 2:00 p.m. in Iowa City's City Park. Learn more at https://hancher.uiowa.edu/2024-25/inuksuit-talk
Part of Hancher's 52nd Season
Part of the Steven Schick Residency
Learn more about Steven Schick's residency at https://hancher.uiowa.edu/steven-schick-artist-residency
Learn more about this event at https://hancher.uiowa.edu/2024-25/inuksuit