There are many who count John Luther Adams (JLA) as one of the most significant composers on the planet today. Myself included.

On the eve of World Environment Day, with temperatures quivering around 10 degrees, there was a warm glow inside the South Melbourne Town Hall. This past week 16 young musicians from the Australian National Academy of Music had been working on a realisation of JLA’s 2013 intriguing environmental work, Ten Thousand Birds.

Ten Thousand Birds. Photo © Pia Johnson

Their mentor was Tim Munro, ace Aussie fl(a)utist and music activist, originally from Brisbane and now a longtime resident of Chicago. From 2006 to 2015, he was the leading light in the triple Grammy-winning new music ensemble, Eighth Blackbird. These days, the affable and charismatic Munro is more a solo act, specialising, as he says, “in the presentation of large-scale, immersive projects that put listeners at the centre of the musical experience”.

Such is JLA’s Ten Thousand Birds. For almost 40 years, JLA was based in northern Alaska (today, he and his wife Cynthia divide their time between rural Mexico and the wilds of Manhattan). Birdsong has been a primary...