PROGRAM NOTE

Held every May, Bird LA Day celebrates the birds of Southern California and LA’s amazing biodiversity. Bird and nature-themed events are held throughout the greater Los Angeles area. Bird LA Day shines the spotlight on nature, and reminds Angelenos that there is a lot to appreciate about their natural surroundings. Events are family-friendly and free-of-charge.

During this event, Synchromy will stage the Los Angeles Premiere of Ten Thousand Birds by John Luther Adams throughout Debs Park, one of Los Angeles’ largest habitats for native birds. The audience will be invited to follow “flocks” of instruments who will migrate and converge, creating a unique merging of the arts and nature.

John Luther Adams said of the piece, “My life’s work began with birds. From songbirdsongs (1974–80), to Inuksuit (2008), to Canticles of the Holy Wind (2013), the songs of birds have engaged my ears and my imagination for more than forty years. Now I’ve embarked on a new, open-ended series of pieces for a full range of instrumentation – from solos to full orchestra – under the collective title Ten Thousand Birds. All the sounds in this music are specifically notated. However, the moment-to-moment sequence of events is not fixed. There is no master score. In the tradition of Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison’s ‘performance kits’, this folio of unbound pages is an atlas of musical possibilities for performers to use in creating their own unique realisations of the music.”

More information on Bird LA Day is available at birdladay.org.