Caballito Negro collaborates with flutist Debra Harris, percussionists Chris Whyte and Jared Brown, continuing a series of presentations of the epic John Luther Adams’ “songbirdsongs”. A meditation on wildness, “songbirdsongs” is a collection of indeterminate miniature pieces for piccolos, ocarinas, and percussion, based on free translations of bird songs.

Adams writes, “These small songs are echoes of rare moments and places where the voices of birds have been clear and I have been quiet enough to hear. This music is not literal transcription. It is translation. These melodies and rhythms are not so much constructed artifacts as they are spontaneous affirmations. No one has yet explained why the free songs of birds are so simply beautiful. And what do they say? What are their meanings? We may never know. But beyond the realm of ideas and emotions, language and sense, we just may hear something of their essence.”

John Luther Adams is an American composer whose music is inspired by nature, especially the landscapes of Alaska, where he lived from 1978 to 2014. His orchestral work, “Become Ocean,” was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

The concert is presented by Ashland, Oregon’s ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum, as part of its “Wild Music: Sounds & Songs of Life” exhibit.