John Adams
Liberty’s First Crisis presents reminders that elected officials have always been capable of uncivilized behavior toward their colleagues.
In Available Light , Lucinda Childs’ dancers execute a series of movement phrases which to a viewer may seem simple, but in fact require intense focus and control on the dancers’ part.
What we seem to have here is one of the glories of our democracy in action: the blind leading the oblivious; aping distortions and downright falsehoods about the opera.
Things are going well with Monadnock Music: before Saturday’s concert kicked off, managing director Christopher Sink announced that the festival had cleared its financial debts as it heads into next year’s 50th anniversary season.
Howard Hersh hails from northern California, and, as in John Adams’ “City Noir,” the music on Hersh’s album, “Angels and Watermarks,” embraces polyglot West Coast culture in various ways.
This album manages to impressively realize the depth and versatility of John Adams’s music for string quartet. It also announces the arrival of a phenomenal ensemble that plays with a mix of maturity, adventure, and musical insight: this is a group to follow closely and cheer.
The recording was made in December 2010 in San Francisco’s Davies Symphony Hall, and reveals an orchestra fully at home in John Adams’ distinctive idiom.
Although its interior says 21st century, the Shalin Liu Performance Center has a homespun, American 19th-century facade that made me think of Mark Twain and the provincial opera houses of the California Gold Rush. Care was taken to reference the original Haskins Building that once housed a clothing store called Madras and the local yacht…
Music Commentary Series: Jazz and the Piano Concerto — Mavericks, 1960 – 2004
More composers who followed their own distinctive paths when they incorporated jazz into their piano concertos.
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