Special Feature

SPECIAL FEATURE John Luther Adams THEY WERE MY PEOPLE ”I was lucky to have known them when I did . they were my people . and I do not expect to see their kind again.” – John Haines I. Gordon Brooks Wright We are in the middle of nowhere. All the other musicians of the Arctic Chamber Orchestra have flown off to the next stop on our tour of villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. With only our backpacks, a duffle bag full of music stands and a pair of kettledrums, Gordon Wright and I are here, alone, waiting for the plane to return. It is early April. The world around us is an endless expanse of white. After the long night of winter, the sun has come back to the North. The morning is resplendent. But the air is cold. So we stand on the south side of the little shack next to the airstrip, basking in the warm light. Everything is golden. Gordon and I will share many such moments in the decades to come. Yet although I can’t yet imagine what a touchstone this golden light will become in the years ahead, even now I’m aware that this is a special moment of grace. I am living a dream. I am twenty- eight years old. Here in Alaska I have found my own Walden – a rough cabin in the boreal forest. I’ve met the woman who will be my life companion, and together we are crusading to protect this place we so passionately love. I’ve composed my first piece for orchestra. I’m playing percussion and my best friend is conducting as we bring the music back out into the land that in-spired it, sharing it with the people who have lived here longer than anyone can remember. Out here amid the snow and sunlight, the world seems filled with possibilities as broad as the country around us. Standing here, I hold a vision of pristine landscapes protected from destructive human in- cursions, of new music rooted deeply in those landscapes, and a new culture in which we newcomers learn from our Native neighbors how to live in deep harmony with this place. This is a vision that I share with the tall, moose-like, bearded man standing by my side. Gordon Wright was the friend of a lifetime. For some thirty years he and I shared our two great passions: music and nature. Gordon was my musical collaborator, my fellow environmentalist, my camping buddy and my next-door neighbor in the forest outside Fairbanks. Although I love Alaska more than any other place on earth, I was never all that enamored of Fairbanks. Even so, I chose this homely boomtown near the Arctic Circle as my hometown for three principal reasons: The woman I had fallen in love with was there. The mountains I had fallen in love with were nearby. And Gordon Wright lived there. During my first summer in Alaska, I traveled as far north as what is now Denali National Park. But I didn’t make it to Fairbanks until the summer of 1977, when I spent two months in the Brooks Range. Passing through town between my Arctic journeys, I had lunch with Gordon. Gordon had come north in 1969, to teach at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and to serve as music director of the Fairbanks Symphony Orchestra. Before long, he had created the Arctic Chamber Orchestra – a smaller ensemble designed to foster cultural exchange in village Alaska. And in 1971, amid the frenzy over construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Gordon helped establish the Fairbanks Environmental Center. Over that first meal together, Gordon endorsed my determination to live in Alaska and encouraged me to settle in Fairbanks. He told me all about his life in his cabin in the woods a few miles west of town. He said there could be good opportunities for a young composer to work with the Fairbanks Symphony and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, and possibly with the music department at the University of Alaska. Al-though we environmentalists were decisively outnumbered on the northern line, Gordon told me that I would find a strong community of like-minded people who were working hard to make a difference in the future of the young state. 8 Over the next year, when I was back on the ranch in Idaho, Gordon and I exchanged letters. He told me more about life in Fairbanks and encouraged me to keep looking for a way to make my home there. By the summer of 1978, my first marriage had hit the rocks. I was trying to figure out what to do next when I received the letter that changed my life. Gordon told me that the Fairbanks Environmental Center was looking for a new executive director, and that he and Jim Kowalsky (another co- founder of the group) thought I was the guy for the job. So I headed north. Soon after I arrived in Fairbanks, Gordon informed me that I was going to play timpani with the Fairbanks Symphony and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra – an idea that didn’t especially appeal to me. I was working overtime as an environmental activist, and settling into a new relationship with Cindy. I had little interest in most orchestral music. So, for a couple of years, I resisted Gordon’s conscription campaign. But eventually, perhaps inevitably, I relented. Gordon finally persuaded me with a sort of devil’s bargain: If I would play in his orchestras, he would play my music. There’s no doubt that I got the better end of this deal. But Gordon held up his end faithfully and with genuine conviction for the rest of his life. Although I’d never played timpani, I was a percussionist of sorts and I knew how to read a score. Besides, if Gordon believed I could do it, then who was I to doubt? So I ordered some mallets by mail and began practicing. Since I didn’t have free access to the timpani at the university, I practiced at home in my cabin, where my “drums” were four pillows from the sofa. My first concert with the Fairbanks Symphony included Credendum by William Schuman, which has a big flashy timpani solo. I practiced diligently on my pillow drums, and at the first rehearsal I nailed the part. Some of the musicians in the orchestra applauded. My fate was sealed, and for the next decade or so, I was Gordon’s timpanist. Gordon was my best friend. Yet whenever he was on the podium and I was behind the drums, he always addressed me as “Timpani . .” Calling me by the name of my instrument made it clear that the work at hand was not personal. This was not about us. It was about the music. At one of my early rehearsals, I took my one and only unauthorized timpani solo. We were reading through Beethoven’s “Eroica” Sym- 9 phony for the first time. At the beginning of the final movement, there’s a moment when the orchestra tattoos a unison rhythm, followed by silence. I spaced out and I fell behind by a couple of beats. The orchestra played: Bum-bum BUM . And the drums answered boldly: Boom-boom BOOM . ! Gordon stopped and looked at me. “Timpani . .” he said with mock empathy, “you’re allowed to do that . .” (He paused for dramatic effect before adding emphatically . .) “Once!” Everyone burst out laughing. I tried to disappear beneath the drums. And I never played in a rest again. In time I became a fairly good timpanist, probably better than I had been as a rock drummer. I relished the big timpani parts in Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler and Sibelius. I remember how proud I was when I managed to play the fiendishly difficult chromatic passage for timpani in the fourth movement of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra. The key was to remove my shoes and play the quick pedal changes in my sock feet. Under Gordon’s direction, the Fairbanks Symphony played lots of music that by all rights should’ve been beyond the capabilities of a volunteer orchestra on the edge of nowhere. But, with classic Alaskan spirit, we didn’t care. We fearlessly tackled anything that appeared on our music stands. “The world’s scrappiest orchestra,” Gordon called us. Over the course of the years Gordon led me on a never- ending quest for his ideal timpani sound. Riffing on the German word for the kettledrums (“pauken”), he called this elusive Holy Grail: Pauke (pronounced POWK!). We were rehearsing the Bach B-minor Mass when Gordon implored: “Timpani, I need more Pauke!” I tried harder mallets. The Maestro wasn’t satisfied. 10 “More Pauke!” I pulled out the hardest mallets I had. Still, Gordon wanted more, ex- horting me: “It should sound like socking a cow in the belly!” So I turned my mallets over and used the wooden butts. Gordon loved the sound! And I played the entire B-minor Mass with the wrong end of the sticks. I never went to graduate school. Instead, I went to Alaska. Over the years I’ve come to feel that my time playing timpani in the Fair-banks Symphony was more valuable to me than any graduate school might’ve been. And perhaps only in Alaska would such an opportunity have been available to me. Gordon called me “the second conductor,” and I took this seriously. Not only did I learn my timpani parts, I also studied the scores of the major pieces we played.

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