John Luther Adams's The Place We Began contains four mysteriously evocative electro-acoustic works that the composer built from short recorded moments—audio fragments—of his early music (circa the early 1970s). This is not a trip down Memory Lane: in The Place We Began, Adams has reappropriated and transformed these sonic fragments into completely new works that speak to his current musical interests and directions, especially his recent installation pieces, and refer to his past only in ways that are highly personal and conceptual. (Realized by the composer at his studio outside Fairbanks, Alaska.)

“John Luther Adams is a great underappreciated composer who has written music of enormous beauty and sophistication while staying true to his roots as an outsider.” —Bruce Toub, Sequenza21

“Shimmering, vast, luminous, ecstatic.…” —Kyle Gann