Cloudscape
Saturday, March 5th, 2011April 22, 2011 - 7:30pm
“Quantum physics has recently confirmed what shamans and mystics, poets and musicians have long known: the universe is more like music than like matter. It may well be that our most fundamental relationship to the great mysteries is one of listening. Through sustained, concentrated attention to the fullness of the present moment, we listen for the breath of being, the voice of God.” –John Luther Adams
Composer John Luther Adams is known not only for his compositions that summon and embody the vistas of his home in Alaska, but for his tireless activism and interest in environmental causes and his passion for creating sound spaces that evoke a sense of “vastness, separateness and solitude.” (–Alex Ross)
On April 22, 2011, Great Noise Ensemble and The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring present a program in celebration of Earth Day, featuring John Luther Adams’s Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing. Adams describes the work as “a work of musical contemplation, an attempt to consecrate a small time and space for extraordinary listening (…) My hope has been not so much to compose a piece of music as to create — in essentially musical terms, with no external references — a wholeness of music, a sonic presence somehow equivalent to that of a vast landscape.”
For this performance Great Noise Ensemble is hosted by the Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring, participants in the Green Sanctuary program of the Unitarian Universalist Association, who are “dedicated, through individual and collective efforts, to becoming better stewards of the Earth”. Visit www.uucss.org to learn more about UUCSS and www.uua.org to learn about Unitarian Universalism and the Green Sanctuary initiative.
Tickets are available online through OvationTix and at the door: $15 General Admission, $10 Students/Seniors.
Information and Directions To The Unitarian Universalist Church of Silver Spring


Great Noise Ensemble takes a whole different direction with this concert on Friday, December 3 at Catholic University’s Ward Recital Hall: this show features works based on and inspired by pop and rock music from Radiohead to heavy metal. Works by Joshua Bornfield, Stephen Gorbos and Ryan Brown are going to rock the hall, and Steven Mackey’s Deal will feature the guitar stylings of one of our favorite performers, D.J. Sparr. Bring your groove and a friend– this is a show not to be missed.

Art is synergy, and is at its best when its facets reflect the many disciplines which color its classifications.
Great Noise Ensemble presents: