Drift and Providence 2011
date completed
2011
duration
19'
scored for
large orchestra, live sound design
instrumentation
3(II, III=picc.).3.3(II=bass, III=cb).3(III=cbsn.)-4.4.3.1-perc(4)-strings
commission
San Francisco Symphony and New World Symphony
premiere
April 2012, in Miami, FL
I - Embarcadero
II - Drift I
III - Divisadero
IV - Drift II
V - Providence
Program Note by Samuel Adams
Drift and Providence is an ‘Anthropocentric’ essay, a work that engages with themes of water and the history of mimesis in the the classical tradition (Debussy’s La Mer and Wagner’s Rheingold, for example), but with the acute awareness that nature may no longer be an invulnerable force.
The work is scored for large orchestra and digitally filtered percussion. The form is in five movements played without pause. The odd-numbered movements suggest archetypal musical signposts: Embarcadero, a point of departure; Divisadero, a point of furthest distance; and Providence, a safe place. The even-numbered movements, entitled Drift I and Drift II, follow a series of shifting harmonies and gradual increases in energy.
The sound world of Drift and Providence consists of two main elements. The first is a complex cloud of noise coaxed by the percussionist’ scraping of metallic instruments: cowbells, automobile brake drums and sizzle cymbals. From this texture a sound designer isolates, amplifies and processes overtones in real time that, recombined into the rest of the ensemble, create a digital glow. The other element is an acoustic orchestration with many layers of density and activity: fast on the surface, slow in its depths, but constantly shifting in harmony and color, never static.
I began work sketching the work in the summer of 2011 and completed the score in February of the following year, splitting my time between Oakland, California, and Brooklyn, New York.
-Samuel Adams
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press
"In composing, just as in life, it's important to make a good first impression. Not least among the pleasures of Samuel Adams' wondrously alluring "Drift and Providence," which got its local premiere in Davies Symphony Hall on Friday night from Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony, is how swiftly the composer lets his listeners know they're in good hands.
Through five connected movements, Adams devotes most of his effort to the creation of big fields of orchestral texture that are vaporous around the edges (more than once the piece put me in mind of a Mark Rothko painting in sound). The most intriguing aspect of his writing here is the harmonic palette, beginning with a few relatively spare chords that he fills in with colorful dissonances and a midcourse veer into some straight-out funk."
SF Chronicle ↗
"...structured in five sections around what Mr. Adams calls three “imagined places,” though two are familiar to San Franciscans: “Embarcadero,” a neighborhood, and “Divisadero,” a street. Two connective sections are titled “Drift I” and “Drift II.” The piece concludes with “Providence,” which in this context seems to represent a state of well-being rather than the capital of Rhode Island. But the music unfolds continuously and organically.
From the start, sections of the orchestra, especially the strings, play undulating, lapping motifs that murmur and bustle, as if rhythmic riffs and whole themes were trying to coalesce into forms more concrete. Eventually short, abrupt phrases break out into passages that sound like fractured jazz piercing through fog. My patience for the instrumental atmospherics would have been tried had Mr. Adams not kept hooking me with the precision of the pungent harmonic writing and the sweeping arc of the whole piece, which is filled with dramatic pauses when everything stops for a moment of silence. Mr. Thomas and the San Francisco players gave a vividly colored, taut and organic performance."
New York Times ↗
