Chatham, NY

Ten Thousand Birds at PS21

The highlight of PS21’s summer season will be the New York State premiere of Grammy Award-winning composer John Luther Adams’ Ten Thousand Birds, which is set to be performed by Alarm Will Sound. Drawing inspiration from birdsong, the piece explores the connection between nature and music—a topic Adams has continually explored throughout his remarkable career.

A free community program called “Follow Me Into the Field.” will take place the next day.  Led by Alarm Will Sound musicians, families will take a socially distanced musical tour of the PS21/Crellin Park landscape. Through the voyage, instrumental sounds will commingle with the calls of wildlife, rustling leaves, and human footfalls. As in John Luther Adams’s composition, birdsong becomes music, instrumental sounds transmute into natural ones, and the open setting becomes artistic space, where the lines blur between human creativity and natural phenomena.