John Luther Adams: Crossing Open Ground
Directed by Dimitri Chamblas and Christopher Rountree
With Nathalie Joachim, Sidney Hopson, C.J. Camerieri and Trever Hagen
Produced by Liquid Music
Presented by Center for the Arts at Kayenta
October 25, 2025
Southern Utah (site to be announced)
Environmentalist composer John Luther Adams’s Crossing Open Ground, an outdoor work for winds, brass and percussion, offers an opportunity to rediscover and reconsecrate place—an invitation to listen to the older, deeper resonances beneath our feet. In the stunning landscape of Southern Utah, Liquid Music seeks to honor "one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century" (The New Yorker) with a concert fitting to his singular vision and natural world inspiration.
Guided by music director Christopher Rountree, choreographer Dimitri Chamblas, and powerhouse section leaders Sidney Hopson (percussion), Nathalie Joachim (winds), C.J. Camerieri (brass), and Trever Hagen (brass), an acoustic ensemble of 36 local musicians will perform the work. Throughout the performance, each performer and each listener is free to follow their own individual path through the physical and musical landscape—encouraging a renewed sense of place and time experienced together.
Crossing Open Ground is commissioned by The Aspen Music Festival and School and The Barry Lopez Foundation for Art & Environment, and dedicated to Barry Lopez.
About the artists
John Luther Adams
For John Luther Adams, music is a lifelong search for home—an invitation to slow down, pay attention, and remember our place within the larger community of life on earth.
Living for almost 40 years in northern Alaska, JLA discovered a unique musical world grounded in space, stillness, and elemental forces. In the 1970’s and into the '80s, he worked full time as environmental activist. But the time came when he felt compelled to dedicate himself entirely to music. He made this choice with the belief that, ultimately, music can do more than politics to change the world. Since that time, he has become one of the most widely admired composers in the world, receiving the Pulitzer Prize, a Grammy Award, and many other honors.
In works such as Become Ocean, In the White Silence, and Canticles of the Holy Wind, Adams brings the sense of wonder that we feel outdoors into the concert hall. And in outdoor works such as Inuksuit and Sila: The Breath of the World, he employs music as a way to reclaim our connections with place, wherever we may be.
A deep concern for the state of the earth and the future of humanity drives Adams to continue composing.
As he puts it: “If we can imagine a culture and a society in which we each feel more deeply responsible for our own place in the world, then we just may be able to bring that culture and that society into being. This will largely be the work of people who will be here on this earth when I am gone. I place my faith in them.”
Since leaving Alaska, JLA and his wife Cynthia have made their home in the deserts of Mexico, Chile, and the southwestern United States.
Dimitri Chamblas
From the À bras-le-corps duet created with Boris Charmatz in 1993 to the one with Kim Gordon in 2018, Dimitri Chamblas' career reflects a taste for encounters that he never ceases to develop. He has worked with a diverse array of artists, including Bret Easton Ellis, William Forsythe, Glen Keane, Benjamin Millepied, Mathilde Monnier, Alex Prager, Nile Rodgers, Claire Tabouret, and Virginie Viard.
In 2015, he founded and ran the 3e Scène at the Opéra national de Paris, then became Dean of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles in 2017. Dimitri Chamblas defines his own cartography of creation, moving dance to places where it is least expected, such as inside high-security prisons, as witnessed by Manuela Dalle's documentary Dancing in A-Yard.
His work has been presented at the Tate Modern (London), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Opéra national de Paris, Performa New York, NYU Skirball (New York), and the Musée du Louvre (Paris).
Today, it's through his Studio that he develops his projects: takemehome, a piece for 9 performers in collaboration with Kim Gordon, the staging of Crowd Out, an opera for 1000 voices by David Lang, or Slow Show, a performance for fifty participants that slows down time and gives rise to an eponymous installation made up of a series of video portraits. As a dancer, teacher, choreographer, and artistic director, dance is the vehicle that allows Dimitri Chamblas to travel through various geographical and social contexts around the globe.
Christopher Rountree
Christopher Rountree is a three time Grammy Nominated conductor, composer, curator, band leader, and educator. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of the orchestral collective Wild Up, Music Director of Long Beach Opera, co-founder of the Los Angeles Conducting Co-op, and curator of the LA Phil’s Fluxus Festival.
Rountree has become regarded as one of the most iconoclastic conductors and programmers in classical music, his inimitable style leading to collaborations with: Björk, John Adams, Yoko Ono, David Lang, Scott Walker, La Monte Young, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alison Knowles, Ragnar Kjartansson, Dev Hynes, Sigourney Weaver, Tyshawn Sorey, Sarah Davachi, Julia Holter, Ryoji Ikeda, John Luther Adams, Allora and Calzadilla, Raven Chacon, and many of the planet’s greatest orchestras and ensembles including the National, San Francisco, Houston, Cincinnati, and Chicago Symphonies, the LA Philharmonic, Roomful of Teeth, Ochestre de Paris, the Washington National, Los Angeles, Omaha, San Diego, Detroit, and Atlanta Operas, and the Martha Graham Dance Company who tours the world with his revival of Graham’s solo Immediate Tragedy.
He has presented compositions and concerts at Walt Disney Concert Hall, Palais Garnier, Mile High Stadium, The Metropolitan Museum, Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Hammer, The Getty, LACMA, The National Gallery, in a grove of old California oak trees, on a basketball court, in a museum bathroom, and at Lincoln Center on the New York Philharmonic’s Biennale.
Sidney Hopson, percussion lead
The epitome of the citizen-artist, Sidney Hopson slams out rhythms, articulates the power of the arts, and defines how culture orgs should act, like no one we’ve ever met. Genius of the dad joke, and aspiring curry-ist, Sidney’s mic is never unmuted at the wrong time on a digital meeting. He’s built a music program in Jordan to deter refugee-artists and their communities from joining regional terror organizations (who sought to exploit their economic vulnerability and despair). He’s designed and co-produced shows that challenged archaic notions of legitimacy and power, and actively worked to develop the platform of a political candidate whom he subsequently voted for. He’s failed over and over and (he reports) “often in rapid succession,” but he’s kept going. Sidney has made music with Peter Eötvös, Adele, Stevie Wonder, Ellen Reid, Garrett McQueen, Rhianna, and John Williams. He’s currently authoring a series of essays on the case for—and against—establishing a U.S. Secretary of Culture, Media, & Sport, developing domestic and foreign arts policy platform proposals for the Biden-Harris Administration, and perfecting his panang curry recipe.
Nathalie Joachim, winds lead
Nathalie Joachim is a Grammy-nominated performer and composer. The Haitian-American artist is hailed for being “a fresh and invigorating cross-cultural voice” (The Nation). Her creative practice centers an authentic commitment to storytelling and human connectivity while advocating for social change and cultural awareness, gaining her the reputation of being “powerful and unpretentious.” (New York Times)
Ms. Joachim is Assistant Professor of Composition at Princeton University and is regularly commissioned to write for orchestra, instrumental and vocal ensembles, dance, and interdisciplinary theater. This season’s highlights include new works for Carnegie Hall, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Grant Park Music Festival, and Spoleto Festival USA. Her landmark project, Fanm d’Ayiti, an evening-length work for flute, voice, string quartet and electronics, celebrates and explores her personal Haitian heritage and received a GRAMMY nomination for Best World Music Album. Joachim’s highly anticipated sophomore album, Ki moun ou ye—an intimate examination of ancestral connection and self—was co-released by Nonesuch Records and New Amsterdam Records in early 2024.
Joachim is a United States Artist Fellow and co-founder of the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix. She is an alumnus of The Juilliard School and The New School.
C.J. Camerieri, brass co-lead
Since graduating from The Juilliard School in 2004 with a degree in Classical Trumpet Performance, CJ Camerieri has become an esteemed soloist, chamber musician, and indispensable collaborator for some of the most important artists of our time.
Camerieri is a two-time Grammy award winner (Best New Artist, 2011 and Best Alternative Album, 2011) and a co-founder of the acclaimed contemporary classical sextet yMusic (who the New Yorker has called “six contemporary classical polymaths who playfully overstep the boundaries of musical genres”). Camerieri has toured the world as a core member of Paul Simon’s band since 2013 and with artists such as Bon Iver, Sufjan Stevens, Ben Folds, and Sting, among many others. He has contributed to over 200 recordings and has commissioned over 100 new works of chamber music featuring the trumpet, including pieces by Andrew Norman, Gabriella Smith, Nico Muhly, Marcos Balter, Ryan Lott, and Missy Mazzoli.
In 2021 Camerieri debuted his solo project CARM, which was highlighted by performances on The Colbert Show and Tiny Desk Concert. For Paul Simon’s “Farewell Tour” in 2018, Camerieri brought yMusic into Simon’s touring band. This resulted in contemporary classical arrangements of the artist’s iconic songs being performed in arenas around the world, as well as in featured performances on Saturday Night Live and The Colbert Show. His trio project, Heavy MakeUp, featuring himself, Edie Brickell, and Trever Hagen just released their second full length record on Sony Records.
Camerieri is also an accomplished French Horn player, keyboardist, arranger, composer, and improviser—comfortable in all styles and genres of music. In addition, Camerieri has held numerous chairs on Broadway; played principal trumpet with orchestras such as Orpheus, The Knights, and Orchestra of St. Lukes; and has written arrangements for many types of ensembles on countless recordings and performances.
Trever Hagen, brass co-lead
Trever Hagen has collaborated with a range of musicians and ensembles from Bon Iver to Mouse on Mars. As well, Hagen holds a Grammy nomination, a PhD and is an Oxford Press author. He has given talks and masterclasses on sound, music, noise, and trumpet at universities and conferences in the U.S., Europe, and Asia.