Sila: The Breath of the World

Cranbrook Upper School Quad
500 Lone Pine Road,
Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304

Saturday, August 29, 2020
6:00pm - 8:00pm

PRESENTED BY CRANBROOK CENTER FOR COLLECTIONS AND RESEARCH IN PARTNERSHIP WITH DETROIT CHAMBER WINDS & STRINGS (DCWS) AND GREAT LAKES CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL (GLCMF)

TICKETS
$100 per person

On a beautiful, late summer day, Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research collaborated with the Detroit Chamber Winds & Strings to stage a performance of a contemporary work by the American composer, John Luther Adams (born 1953). This in-person program brought a group of musicians and their audience to Cranbrook’s campus to create and experience a once-in-a-lifetime concert. Co-hosted by the Great Lakes Chamber Music Festival, this concert—with an overabundance of caution—safely assembled thirty-two professional musicians (16 brass, 16 percussion), sixty-two fortunate audience members, four production assistants, and one musical director, all widely dispersed within Cranbrook Schools’ magnificent Cranbrook Campus Quadrangle.

ABOUT JOHN LUTHER ADAMS
Pulitzer prize-winning composer John Luther Adams is known for works that are intended to be heard outdoors, compositions in which the sounds of the instruments merge with the sounds of nature. Adams describes the experience as “ecological listening” in which music encompasses a “multiplicity of sounds all around us.”

ABOUT SILA: THE BREATH OF THE WORLD
The work the Center and Cranbrook Schools helped present in August took it one step further—Sila: The Breath of the World added architecture to the experience. Originally performed outdoors in 2014 at Lincoln Center in New York, where the music echoed off the architecture of Eero Saarinen, the staging at Cranbrook featured the architecture of Eero’s father, Eliel Saarinen. It was an experience that the Center will long remember, especially the final minutes of the concert during which the sounds created by the voices of the musicians quietly faded, merging with the sounds of the rustling leaves and the chirping of birds.

WATCH NOW
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research is now pleased to be able to invite the members of the broader Cranbrook community—including the Center’s new audiences around the world—to experience a filmed version of the concert, one that tries to capture the multiplicity of sounds created by the thirty-two musicians scattered across the Quad. We suggest you start by watching the one-minute trailer, during which Center Director Gregory Wittkopp introduces the experience at Cranbrook. Then, when you have the time, watch the full one-hour video, which includes a moving introduction by the composer. The concert video will be available through Wednesday, June 30, 2021.

Sila: The Breath of the World is one more example of the many ways Cranbrook Center for Collection and Research is sharing the wonders of Cranbrook, including its architecture, with audiences around the world.