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It was surprising to find a story in The New Yorker magazine in which a prominent music critic manages to mention John Luther Adams, the Alaska Goldpanners, Fred Meyer, Gordon Wright, John Haines, the Fairbanks Symphony and the University of Alaska Museum of the North within the same tale.

Alex Ross, the magazine’s music critic, traveled to Fairbanks at breakup to research a profile of Adams. The result is a great tribute to the Fairbanks musician and composer.

I can’t remember the last time that notoriety of this magnitude has been accorded an Alaska artist.

Ross describes the work of the Fairbanks composer in detail, highlighting his 2006 installation at the museum in which natural phenomena such as the aurora and earthquakes are transformed in a special room into “an intricate, vibrantly colored field of electronic sound.”

The May 12 issue of the magazine features Adams and several other innovators. His musical contribution to the museum, known as “The Place Where You Go to Listen,” is a unique work of art.

Ross, who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism in 2007, writes that the sound room at the museum “confirms Adams’s status as one of the most original musical thinkers of the new century.”

“At the age of 55, he is perhaps the chief standard-bearer of American experimental music, of the tradition of solitary sonic tinkering that began on the West Coast almost a century ago and gained new strength after the Second World War, when John Cage and Morton Feldman created supreme abstractions in musical form,” Ross said.

“Talking about his work, Adams admits that it can sound strange, that it lacks familiar reference points, that it’s not exactly popular — by a twist of fate, he is sometimes confused with John Coolidge Adams, the creator of the opera ‘Nixon in China’ and the most widely performed living American composer — and yet he’ll also say that it’s got something, or at least, ‘It’s not nothing.’”

Amid the praise for Adams’ music, Ross writes the composer “blends in well with the proudly scruffy characters who populate the diners and bars of Fairbanks.”

Adams and his wife, Cindy, who runs the Internet business GrantStation, are both members of the community board of directors of the Alaska Goldpanners.

“When they go shopping at Fred Meyer, the all-purpose store in town, they are peppered with questions about the state of the team,” Ross writes.

The critic notes that Cindy “has been the mainstay of his occasionally precarious existence since the late 1970s,” which is a nice way of putting it.

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POLLEN COUNT: This hasn’t been a bad year for those who suffer from allergies to birch pollen.

Dr. Tim Foote of the Tanana Valley Clinic reports that it appears the peak reading was 745 pollen granules per cubic meter May 14. The peak levels have been trending downward in recent years, he said. In 2002, just about everyone had watery eyes when the peak level was 3,000.

The poplar, cottonwood and aspen readings are trending a bit higher in recent years. The peak so far has been 600, compared to 200 a few years back.

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LATHROP LEADERS: Judy Jasperson, who helped young people learn about government by sponsoring student council for 19 years, is retiring from Lathrop High School. She has taught 28 years, all but one at Lathrop High School.

What Jasperson has done for student government leaders, Nan Worum has done in the field of math, helping countless students unlock some of its secrets. She is retiring from Lathrop after a teaching career of 31 years, 24 of them with the district.

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TORCH RUN: The Fairbanks Torch Run is today at 10 a.m., starting at the UAF police department.

Athletes from the Special Olympics expected to participate include: Guy West, Amy Murriels, Chrissy Peri, Sharon Lee, Bendi Power, Alex Cain, Jonathan Leeman, Sandy McWhirer, Alex Lee, Kalen Cornwall, Sean Flannery, Dahkota Mitchell and Mandy Gentleman.

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CEMETERY CLEANUP: The Birch Hill Cemetery Cleanup is today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Food and drinks will be served for lunch, thanks to the Midnight Sun Lions Club.

Bring your own tools and equipment and help improve the looks of the hillside cemetery.

Dermot Cole can be reached at cole@newsminer.com or 459-7530.