Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer Impacts Sioux Falls Community

The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO) opens its 95th season with a celebration of the centennial of the Pulitzer Prize with Become Ocean on October 8, 2016. Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams will join the SDSO for a three-day residency starting October 6, impacting multiple areas of our community.

• John Luther Adams will present a lecture at Augustana University as part of the Knutson Master Class Series on Thursday, October 6 at 3pm. The lecture will be held in the Kresge Auditorium of the Humanities Center at Augustana University.

• On Thursday, October 6 at 5:00 p.m. SDSO Music Director Delta David Gier and Pulitzer Board President Randell Beck will host a panel discussion with John Luther Adams about his prize-winning orchestral work Become Ocean and the environmental changes that inspired it. Norman Bliss, Principal Scientist with ASRC Federal InuTeq, will also join the panel. The panel will be held in the Washington Pavilion's Visual Arts Center amongst Steve Bormes' exhibit "Deep Sea Imaginarium."

• The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra League will host Music Director Delta David Gier and composer John Luther Adams at theirOctober 7 luncheon, providing an opportunity to get up close and personal with both of the artists. To make a reservation, please call the SDSO office at (605) 335-7933 ext. 15.

• The South Dakota Symphony Youth Orchestra will workshop with John Luther Adams on his string quartet piece, "The Wind in High Places." Adams will work directly with the students, offering them the opportunity to work with a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

Adams was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his composition, Become Ocean, and a Grammy Award in 2015. Adams has been devoted to environmental protection work his entire life, and has received the Heinz Award for his contributions to raising environmental awareness as well as the Nemmers Prize from Northwestern University and the Distinguished Artist Award from the Rasmuson Foundation. He has served as the executive director of the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, and has taught at several universities, including Harvard University and the Oberlin Conservatory.

"There are shocks of beauty, shocks of feeling, shocks of insight. Such were the virtues of John Luther Adams' Become Ocean," says The NewYorker's Alex Ross. In 2014, the Pulitzer committee referred to Become Ocean as "a haunting orchestral work that suggests a relentless tidal surge, evoking thoughts of melting polar ice and rising sea levels."

The SDSO will perform Become Ocean as well as Debussy's La Mer, and Wagner's "Entry of the Gods into Valhalla" on Saturday, October 8 at 7:30 p.m at the Washington Pavilion. Tickets can be purchased online at sdsymphony.org or by calling the Washington Pavilion box office at(605) 367 - 6000.

The Crescendo Program offers $10 tickets to all Classical Series performances to anyone under the age of 35 as well as free tickets for children with the purchase of an adult ticket to any Classical Series concert. In addition, members of the community who have never attended an SDSO performance before can receive a complimentary ticket to their first Classical Series concert. For more information on the Crescendo Program, please call the box office at (605) 367-6000.

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