John Adams

Book Review: “Liberty’s First Crisis” — Oddballs to the Rescue

March 31, 2016
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Liberty’s First Crisis presents reminders that elected officials have always been capable of uncivilized behavior toward their colleagues.

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Classical CD Reviews: John Adams’ “Absolute Jest” (SFS Media); Alexander Melnikov plays Schumann (Harmonia mundi)

August 27, 2015
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John Adams’ Absolute Jest is a sheer blast of fun, wildly inventive and, at its best, a vertiginous collage.

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Music Commentary Series: Jazz and the Piano Concerto — Mavericks, 1960 – 2004

April 8, 2015
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More composers who followed their own distinctive paths when they incorporated jazz into their piano concertos.

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Dance Feature: “Available Light” — Revived at MASS MoCA

March 11, 2015
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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.

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Music Commentary: “I’ve neither seen nor heard it, but I don’t like it. (And neither should you.)”: “The Death of Klinghoffer” Meets the Know-Nothing Protest

October 23, 2014
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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.

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Fuse Concert Review: Monadnock Music’s Season Finale — The Stuff of Inspiration

August 18, 2014
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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.

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Classical CD Reviews: John Adams’ “City Noir” and Saxophone Concerto (Nonesuch) and Howard Hersh’s “Angels and Watermarks”

May 21, 2014
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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.

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Classical Music CD Review: Attacca Quartet’s Adventurous “Fellow Traveler” (Azica Records)

March 16, 2013
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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.

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CD Reviews: John Adams — Harmonielehre and Short Ride in a Fast Machine (SFSO/Tilson Thomas)

February 21, 2012
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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.

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Opera Review: “Nixon in China” at The Shalin Liu Performance Center

February 14, 2011
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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…

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