1993 grantee John Luther Adams is a composer based in Alaska. Adams received his FCA grant at age 40 and it allowed him to take twelve months off from the artistic constraints of commissioned work and devote himself entirely to producing new work. During these twelve months, Adams worked on two very large projects: Strange and Sacred Noise and Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing. Adams had been compelled to write these pieces for some time but had not been able to find the necessary funding or time to do so.
Strange and Sacred Noise was premiered, toured and recorded by the highly acclaimed Percussion Group Cincinnati. The Apollo Chamber Orchestra recorded Clouds of Forgetting, Clouds of Unknowing and it continues to tour nationally. Since receiving the FCA grant, Adams has been commissioned by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Seattle Chamber Orchestra and Kamer Chamber Choir in Latvia among many others. In 1996, he was an artist-in-residence at the Library of Congress and in the following year the BBC Philharmonic performed his work. In 2010, Adams was commissioned by the American Composers Orchestra to write The Light Within, which premiered at Carnegie Hall. He was honored with the prestigious 2010 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition from Northwestern University, which includes a cash award of $100,000. In early 2011, his ambitious work Inuksuit, which features dozens of percussionists, was performed at the Park Avenue Armory.
