Life×
1953
LIFE: Born in Meridian, Mississippi, the son of an accountant working for AT&T, John Luther Adams moves with his family to various parts of the US during his childhood.
TIMES: President Truman announces the detonation of ‘Ivy Mike’, the world’s first hydrogen bomb, raising worldwide fears of nuclear war.
1971
LIFE: He moves to Los Angeles to study at the California Institute of the Arts; composer James Tenney becomes an important mentor. TIMES: In LA, Charles Manson and three of his cult ‘family’ members are found guilty of murdering seven people in 1969, including the pregnant actress Sharon Tate.
1993
LIFE: HE composes Earth and the Great Weather, a 90-minute work with texts in English, Iñupiaq, Gwich’in and Latin that explores the ‘sonic geography’ of the Arctic. TIMES: Former Wimbledon and US Open champion Arthur Ashe dies of complications related to HIV, thought to have been contracted years earlier during a blood transfusion.
2014
LIFE: Become Ocean wins the Pulitzer Prize for Music, and he and his wife Cynthia (‘Cindy’) leave Alaska, settling initially in New York.
TIMES: The United Nations International Court of Justice orders Japan’s Antarctic whaling programme, found to be commercial rather than scientific, to cease.
1978
LIFE: He moves to central Alaska, a state he first visited in 1975 as an environmental activist. He lives for ten years in a rudimentary cabin in the woods outside Fairbanks.
TIMES: Grease, starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-john, is a huge success as it opens in cinemas across the world, and becomes the highestgrossing musical film up to this point.
2006
LIFE: In recognition of his sound and light installation The Place Where You Go to Listen and other Alaskan-inspired works, he is named a United States Artists Fellow.
TIMES: Wikileaks, founded by the Australian Julian Assange, registers its domain name, so establishing the internet activist website. It publishes its first media leak in December.