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Journal Archives for John Adams

  • John Adams profile
    Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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    John Adams Lectures at Yale on Doctor Faustus and Doctor Atomic

    John Adams gives the first of two Tanner Lectures on Human Values this afternoon at Yale University this afternoon, with the second to follow tomorrow afternoon. "Perhaps the most celebrated living American composer," writes the New Haven Advocate, "John Adams is nearly as adept with the English language as he is with musical notation." What's more, "Adams has created some of the most essential classical music of our age."

  • John Adams Earbox.com "Hell Mouth"
    Wednesday, October 28, 2009
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    John Adams Redesigns Website, Earbox.com, Adding New Composer's Blog

    Earbox.com has long been the go-to source for information on the works of composer John Adams and has now received a makeover, including the addition of a blog from the composer. The first few posts have already caught the attention of The New Yorker's Alex Ross, who writes, "Few artists are as engagingly forthright in their interviews and writings. Adams has now started up a blog on his home site, with the promising name Hell Mouth."

  • John Adams 2009 color w/scores
    Wednesday, October 21, 2009
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    John Adams's "City Noir" Premiere to Air on PBS's "Great Performances"

    When John Adams's City Noir received its world premiere early this month in the gala Opening Night concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic under its new music director Gustavo Dudamel, it was met with rave reviews and an adulatory audience response. The performance, which was paired with Mahler's First Symphony, airs tonight on PBS's Great Performances. On his new blog, Adams praises Dudamel as "the genuine article."

  • John Adams "Harmonium / Klinghoffer Choruses" [cover]
    Tuesday, October 20, 2009
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    Film Scored by "American Icon" John Adams Gets Hollywood World Award Nomination; Composer to Deliver Tanner Lectures

    I Am Love, the film to which John Adams has contributed his first-ever score, has been nominated for a Hollywood World Award for best international film; the Los Angeles Times says the score "adds a staggering emotional punch" to the film. The Times review of Sunday's LA Master Chorale performance of Klinghoffer Choruses calls Adams "an American icon" and the opera's music as "some of the most haunting Adams has written." The composer delivers the Tanner Lectures on Human Values next week at Yale.

  • John Adams "Doctor Atomic" Symphony [cover]
    Monday, October 12, 2009
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    New Music Box: John Adams's "Doctor Atomic" Symphony "A Tight, Visceral Ride You Won't Want to Miss"

    John Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony "comes across as a tight, visceral ride that you won't want to miss," says New Music Box of the Nonesuch recording, and "the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Robertson light it on fire ... [I]t's as charmed a production as you could wish for." A new exhibit at the Dallas Museum of Art features a sculpture inspired by the opera Doctor Atomic.

  • Gustavo Dudamel
    Friday, October 9, 2009
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    NY Times: John Adams's "Riveting" New Piece Premiered in "Exceptional, Exciting Concert" by LA Phil

    John Adams's City Noir was given its world premiere last night in the Opening Night performance of the Los Angeles Philharmonic season and the Inaugural Gala of new music director Gustavo Dudamel. It "was an exceptional and exciting concert by any standard," says the New York Times's Anthony Tommasini. "Moment to moment the music [of City Noir] is riveting." The Los Angeles Times's Mark Swed says: "I can’t imagine another orchestra that could sell such a piece so effectively on the first performance."

  • John Adams profile
    Thursday, October 8, 2009
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    LA Phil, Gustavo Dudamel Premiere John Adams's "City Noir" for Music Director's Inaugural Gala

    John Adams's City Noir receives its world premiere tonight in the Opening Night Concert of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Inaugural Gala for its new music director, Gustavo Dudamel, at Walt Disney Concert Hall. "I want to make my music an opportunity to extend myself, and my language," Adams tells the Los Angeles Times. The piece will be performed again this fall for the Philharmonic's Adams-curated West Coast, Left Coast festival.

  • John Adams "Doctor Atomic" Symphony [cover]
    Wednesday, September 30, 2009
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    BBC: John Adams's "Doctor Atomic" Symphony "Fervently Alive to Felt and Imagined Experience"

    John Adams' latest recording on Nonesuch, Doctor Atomic Symphony, is out now. The Guardian describes the piece's final movement as Adams "at his most brilliant"; the Telegraph too commends the entire work's "sheer brilliance." The BBC says that David Robertson and the Saint Louis Orchestra "take a robustly muscular and rooted approach to Adams’ multi-layered, intricately woven latticework of sounds and colours leavened by flights of poetic fancy and fantasy ... music that seems fervently alive to both felt and imagined experience."

  • John Adams "Doctor Atomic" Symphony [cover]
    Monday, September 14, 2009
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    John Adams's "Guide to Strange Places" Named "Song of the Day" by Jazz.com

    John Adams's recent Nonesuch release features the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and conductor David Robertson performing the first recordings of Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony and Guide to Strange Places. Jazz.com names the latter today's Song of the Day, saying: "This is the composer at his most mature, and demonstrating an uncanny skill in channeling his personality through a symphony orchestra." The Stranger's Christopher DeLaurenti calls it his "favorite orchestral work of this decade." The Philadelphia Inquirer gives the album 3.5 stars; the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, an A-.

  • John Adams 2009 color w/scores
    Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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    NY Times: John Adams Leads "Vigorous, Richly Detailed Performances" of His Works at Lincoln Center

    John Adams, the artist-in-residence for this year's Mostly Mozart festival at Lincoln Center, followed the highly successful three-night run conducting his opera A Flowering Tree—"one of the festival’s hottest tickets," according to the New York Times—by leading the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) in what the Times calls "vigorous, richly detailed performances" of three of his works at Alice Tully Hall Monday night.

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