Unprecedented installation combines music by John Luther Adams and scenography by Diogo Aguiar Studio

A project created from a musical composition based on field recordings in Alaska, together with a scenic device that links the North American landscape to the salt flats of Aveiro. Until November 2 at the Teatro Aveirense.

On the next October 19, at 4:00 PM, the installation Houses of the Wind will be inaugurated in Aveiro, which combines a musical composition by John Luther Adams – winner of awards such as Pulitzer and Grammy – with an architectural intervention by Diogo Aguiar Studio. The project, created specifically for Aveiro 2024 – the Portuguese Capital of Culture, is musically curated by Martim Sousa Tavares and can be visited until November 2 at the Teatro Aveirense. Admission is free.

The starting point of the installation is a musical work by John Luther Adams – titled Houses of the Wind – composed from field recordings in Alaska (USA), featuring sounds of a wind harp, an instrument placed in nature and activated by the wind. It is a piece that strays from the composer’s canons, as it involves only the manipulation of sounds, without any intervention by musical performers. With this work, the musician – who was an environmental activist for several years – pays homage to Alaska, where he lived for 40 years, and proposes a reflection on the current state of the world, in an exercise that places climate change as a fundamental axis.

It was from this musical composition that Diogo Aguiar Studio constructed its intervention, based on the ecological awareness present in the work of John Luther Adams. The studio – recognized for its work between architecture and art – combines a textile construction, which will be suspended in the Studio Room of Teatro Aveirense, with a play of lights, aiming to provide an immersive experience that transports the audience to the vast whiteness of the landscapes of Alaska. An exercise that also alludes to the white hills of the salt flats of Aveiro, similar to Alaska in both its abstract topographies and its forms, colour, and suggestion of movement.

The installation Houses of the Wind at Teatro Aveirense stems from the relationship between sound and scenic beauty, inviting contemplation, observation, and listening, enhanced by the slow and progressive evolution of music and light. This project is musically curated by Martim Sousa Tavares and derives from Aveiro’s candidacy as European Capital of Culture in 2027, fulfilling the goal of integrating some of its proposals into the programming of Aveiro 2024 – Portuguese Capital of Culture.

BIOGRAPHIES:

John Luther Adams
For John Luther Adams (JLA), music has represented a search for a place he can call his own, developed throughout his life – an invitation to slow down, listen, and remember our place in the vast community of life on Earth.

Living nearly 40 years in the north of Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world, based on space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970s and 80s, he worked full-time as an environmental activist, but there came a time when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made that choice believing that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world. Since then, he has become one of the most admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy, and many other honours.

In works such as Become Ocean, In the White Silence, and Canticles of the Holy Wind, Adams brings the sense of wonder felt outdoors into the concert hall. In outdoor works like Inuksuit and Sila: The Breath of the World, he uses music as a means of recovering our connections to place, wherever we are.

A deep concern for the state of the planet and the future of humanity drives Adams to continue composing. As he says: “If we can imagine a culture and a society in which each of us feels deeply responsible for our place in the world, then we might be able to bring that culture and that society to life.”

Since leaving Alaska, JLA and his wife, Cynthia, have lived in the deserts of Mexico, Chile, and the southwestern United States.

Diogo Aguiar Studio
Diogo Aguiar Studio is a Portuguese architecture studio founded in Porto in 2016.
The studio operates in the fields of Art and Architecture, designing small buildings, interiors, and spatial installations for public spaces, temporary or otherwise, believing that this ambivalent practice informs and drives the work developed as speculative and spatial research.

Its interests focus on the material and sensory exploration of architectural or artistic spaces, immersive, whether archetypes or ready-mades, through geometric, abstract, and elemental compositions that present themselves as formal systems conscious of the simultaneous experience of (filled space) and (space), seeking to claim the relevance of spatial design in Architecture.

In recent years, the practice has been distinguished with several nominations for international awards, notably: the FAD Awards 2018, BigMat Award 2019, Europe 40 under 40 Award, and Mies van der Rohe Award 2022, among others. Recently, Diogo Aguiar Studio is one of the 25 global practices chosen for ArchDaily New Practices of 2023.

About Diogo Aguiar
Diogo Aguiar is an architect, who graduated from FAUP (2008). He was a co-founder of LIKEarchitects (2010 – 2015), selected for the Official Portuguese Representation at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale.
In 2016, he established Diogo Aguiar Studio, a multidisciplinary studio that works between the boundaries of art and architecture, selected for the Official Portuguese Representation at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.

He is a co-founder and co-curator of the Architecture Gallery, an independent space for reflection and debate on architecture, city, and territory.
He was co-curator of the Architecture program at the Maia Contemporary Art Biennale (2019), Guest Assistant Professor in the Master’s in Architecture at ISCTE-IUL (2020-2021), and since 2021, he has been a Guest Assistant Professor in the Master’s in Architecture at FAUP, teaching Project I.

In 2023, Diogo Aguiar was also an associate curator of Fertile Futures, the 18th Portuguese Representation at the International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Andreia Garcia, focused on themes of sustainability and the future of the planet, based on seven Portuguese hydrogeographies.

Martim Sousa Tavares
Active mainly as a conductor, both as a music director and guest conductor, Martim Sousa Tavares has collaborated with orchestras from eight countries and some of the leading national orchestras. Recently, these include the Romanian Radio Orchestra, Gulbenkian Orchestra, Metropolitana Orchestra of Lisbon, Algarve Orchestra, Filarmonia das Beiras Orchestra, and Northern Orchestra, among others.

He is averse to specializing in a specific repertoire and practices with equal enthusiasm for ancient music and contemporary creation, living this profession with a special sense of mission regarding ecosystemic thinking of classical music. This means that he is particularly interested in the reflection and reinterpretation of the canonical repertoire, as well as what he considers to be a much-needed (re-)discovery and (re-)valuation of marginal or emerging composers such as Florence Price, Nathan Bales, Johanna Beyer, John Luther Adams, Tiago Derriça, among many others to whom he has dedicated himself.

He is committed to equity in musical programming, as well as decentralization and radical accessibility to classical music. For this reason, he enjoys saying that he has already conducted orchestras in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Madrid, Chicago, Saint Petersburg, Milan, or Lisbon, but also – with equal enthusiasm – in places like Rapoula do Côa (Sabugal), Orjais (Covilhã), Colmeal da Torre (Belmonte), Atalaia do Campo (Fundão), Benquerença (Penamacor), Carvalhal Redondo (Nelas) or Pínzio (Pinhel).

His mentors have included, in this order, the following conductors: Gilberto Serembe, Umberto Benedetti Michelangeli, Victor Yampolsky, Alan Pierson, and Christopher Rountree.

With the Orquestra Sem Fronteiras, he won in 2022 the Carlos Magno Award for Youth, an initiative of the European Parliament to reward the values of unity in Europe, the Carlos de Pontes Leça Award from the Mirpuri Foundation, and an honourable mention from the Portugal Justo award from the Manuel António da Mota Foundation.

Always confirm with the concert hall or promoter the conditions of access, confirmation of the date or time, ticket place of sale, price, and availability.

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok and see the exclusive content for social networks.