John Luther Adams

John Luther Adams (born 1953) is an American composer who lived in Alaska from 1978 to 2014, most of that time near Fairbanks. His decades in the far North shaped a body of work rooted in the natural world and a strong sense of place, a practice he has described as exploring the territory between environment and imagination. The Arctic landscape, wilderness, and later the reality of a changing climate became recurring subjects in his music.

His Alaska-era works include the outdoor bird-song piece Songbirdsongs, the expansive In the White Silence, and the percussion work Inuksuit. His orchestral composition Become Ocean, commissioned and premiered by the Seattle Symphony in 2013 and inspired by the oceans of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music and the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Adams left Alaska in 2014 and has since lived elsewhere, dividing time between New York and Mexico before relocating to Australia. His later orchestral works Become Desert and Become River extend the environmental themes of his Alaska years, and the far-northern landscape remains an acknowledged influence on his music.