Journal

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  • Monday,November 17,2008
    nothing

    The Met premiere production of John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic concluded last Thursday; this weekend, the Atlanta Symphony will give a staged production of the piece. Tonight, the composer is at Harvard to lead a performance of The Wound-Dresser, followed by a discussion. The Boston Globe talks with the composer about this "particularly rich time" in his life, as "one of America's busiest and most original composers" and features a review of Adams's memoir, Hallelujah Junction, that concludes: "[T]his is a book that any aspiring artist, in any medium, should read as a kind of how-to guide to achieving artistic success without losing integrity, something that seems to many young artists today nearly impossible. In fact, it is a book for anyone who wants to create something—including a self."

    Journal Topics: On Tour, Reviews
  • Tuesday,November 11,2008
    nothing

    John Adams's memoir, Hallelujah Junction, is now available in the UK. The Independent calls it "engaging" and says that like Adams's musical work of the same name, the book "radiates a calm, Californian confidence, letting its ideas unfold at a gentle pace." The parallels continue: "Adams's unique touch finds its literary analogue in a style of rare precision." The composer "here emerges as a storyteller."

    Journal Topics:
  • Friday,November 7,2008
    nothing

    Following its Met premiere earlier this month, John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic was described as the composer's "most complex and masterly music" by the New York Times and "hauntingly powerful, deeply humane and eloquent" by the Boston Globe. This Saturday's matinee will be broadcast live in movie theaters around the world through The Met: Live in HD, which reaches close to 800 screens. Met General Manager Peter Gelb tells the Boston Herald: "I was determined to bring [Adams] to the company. Taking advantage of that with new media just adds to the experience."

    Journal Topics: On Tour, Film
  • Thursday,October 30,2008
    nothing

    The Seattle Times calls John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction, "as lively as his music," concluding: "[I]t's the range of Adams's musical appetites and intellectual hunger that leaves the strongest impression. This is a man who swallows whole new worlds with every fresh project he takes on—and makes his discoveries new for the rest of us."

    Journal Topics: Reviews
  • Wednesday,October 29,2008
    nothing

    John Adams is the subject of a feature article and interview posted today on Salon.com, about Adams's "pretty marvelous book," Hallelujah Junction, and everything from his "bold and blissful work" Harmonielehre to the "electric" new production of Doctor Atomic at the Met. Says Salon: "[A]fter reading Hallelujah Junction, and learning how he consistently challenged himself to go deeper into and wider into music, and himself, it's easy to see how Adams has earned his spot on the A-List of living composers." With Doctor Atomic, writes The Times (UK), the composer "has written his most eclectic and boldest score."

    Journal Topics: Reviews, Web
  • Monday,October 27,2008
    nothing

    Hallelujah Junction, the two-disc collection of select tracks by John Adams, earns four stars in The Independent. The composer's "charming and illuminating memoir" of the same name, says the New York Times Sunday Book Review, "is a cogent account of its author’s escape from the world of ­audience-alienating 'process' music absorbed with its own making and his arrival at a place where intellectual adventurism and robust emotion coexist ... There is no more self-aggrandizement in this wry, smart and forthright memoir than there is in the venturesome but elegiac music of Adams’s maturity. Indeed, Hallelujah Junction stands with books by Hector Berlioz and Louis Armstrong among the most readably incisive autobiographies of major musical figures."

    Journal Topics: Reviews
  • Tuesday,October 21,2008
    nothing

    John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic received its Met premiere last week. The opera tells the story of the creation of the atomic bomb and the man behind it, J. Robert Oppenheimer. New York magazine says that "Adams has written his finest work" with this "darkly riveting" opera and its "score of microscopic clarity and panoramic sweep." The Star-Ledger praises conductor Alan Gilbert, who "led a performance of precision and expressiveness, bringing the score's harmonic piquancy, metrical complexity, and textural detail together as a visceral rush." The Washington Post says one of the opera's "moments of rich beauty" is the duet between Oppenheimer and his wife, in which "the score is so purely gorgeous it could make you cry."

    Journal Topics: Reviews
  • Friday,October 17,2008
    nothing

    With this week's Met premiere of John Adams's 2005 opera Doctor Atomic, the Boston Globe calls the work "a hauntingly powerful, deeply humane and eloquent work" and praises Adams's score as "some of his most compelling and imaginative music to date," one that "weds a cool Stravinskian precision and rhythmic vitality with a kind of seething Wagnerian dread." The Philadelphia Inquirer calls it "a profound musical and moral journey" in which the composer "surpasses his considerable self ..." The opera and its premiere are the focus of today's episode of WNYC's Soundcheck.

    Journal Topics: Reviews
  • Thursday,October 16,2008
    nothing

    John Adams made his Met debut Monday night with the opening of the new production of his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. "This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music," exclaims the New York Times's Anthony Tomassini. "Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density." The Associated Press calls it an "intense and fascinating" work, in which "Adams has created a score filled with color, syncopation and lush interludes." Newsweek calls the production "stunning," the score "lyrical, romantic, Wagnerian by turns." Also, Bloomberg calls the composer's newest opera, A Flowering Tree, "Adams's most ravishing creation to date," and Slate finds his new memoir "gripping."

    Journal Topics: Artist News, Reviews
  • Monday,October 13,2008
    nothing

    John Adams makes his Met Opera debut tonight with the New York premiere of his opera Doctor Atomic. The New Yorker calls it "a striking example of the new Met’s range." New York Philharmonic Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert conducts, in his company debut. Gerald Finley reprises his role as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and tells the New York Times: "The strength of Doctor Atomic is the layered subtext. Each character has many agendas to get through. It’s very refreshing to reveal aspects that haven’t been seen." Director Penny Woolcock tells The Financial Times: "John's music grows out of the finest lyrical tradition of operatic composition but it is part of the 20th and 21st centuries ... I can hear bits of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix and the rhythms of today."

    Journal Topics: Artist News
  • Thursday,October 9,2008
    nothing

    "John Adams is the voice of America," asserts Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed in his review of Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction. "His instrumental music," Swed explains, "and particularly that for the orchestra, conveys the American experience broadly." The review goes on to examine the biography and works Adams addresses in the memoir, including his operas Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, which Swed calls "an essential part of the American discussion." The book, he concludes, "offers the voice of America straight from the horse's mouth, and to read something so intelligent, reasoned and caring sure feels good these days."

    Journal Topics: Reviews
  • Wednesday,October 8,2008
    nothing

    John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is an "absorbing book," says the New York Times, "which at times reads like a quest narrative that travels through the whole landscape of 20th-century music." Adams has created a "particularly American" sound, reads the review. "His music is both lush and austere, grand and precise. To make an analogy to two poets whose work he has set to music, it’s Walt Whitman on the one hand and Emily Dickinson on the other." The "soundtrack" to the book is available in the companion Nonesuch retrospective, also available now.

    Journal Topics: Album Release, Artist News, Reviews

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