The Barbican joins the Theatre Royal Stratford East in presenting a two-week run of performances of John Adams's 1995 music theatre piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky at the Theatre Royal, opening tonight. The BBC previews the production, saying: "John Adams is arguably America's unofficial national composer." The London Philharmonic performs his Doctor Atomic Symphony at London's Royal Festival Hall.
Earlier this year, the music of John Adams was celebrated at the Barbican in London over a series of concerts and events titled John Adams Focus. Tonight, the Barbican returns its attention once more to the composer's music, joining the Theatre Royal Stratford East in presenting the Opening Night of a two-week run of performances of Adams's 1995 music theatre piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky at the Theatre Royal.
The production was recently featured on BBC World News Today, which also looks at Adams's wider repertoire of "American classics," like Nixon in China. "John Adams is arguably America's unofficial national composer," says BBC's Anna Holligan. You can watch the segment at news.bbc.co.uk.
Taking its title from a quote from a survivor of the 1994 earthquake in Northridge, California, Ceiling/Sky mixes pop, jazz, gospel, blues, and funk into songs that are rich in the sounds and rhythms of American urban life. This "song play," with lyrics by June Jordan, uses the Northridge earthquake as a starting point to explore issues of race, gender, and immigration among young Angelenos. The Boston Globe has described it as some of “the most successful crossover music written in our time.”
Ceiling/Sky premiered at the Zellerbach Playhouse at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1995, under the direction of frequent Adams collaborator Peter Sellars. The first cast recording was released on Nonesuch in 1998 and featured performances from Audra McDonald, Marin Mazzie, and Darius De Haas.
The current production features a young cast of rising stars from the worlds of R&B, pop, gospel, and music theatre and is helmed by Kerry Michael and Matthew Xia, a hip-hop DJ, who tells the Independent: "It's about seven individuals and their response and their ways of dealing with [the earthquake]. It's a musical about stability and about how sometimes that needs to be shaken and removed – so you can see the sky." Read more at independent.co.uk.
To learn more about the new production of Ceiling/Sky at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and order tickets, visit barbican.org.uk.
Also this weekend in London, Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony will be performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Marin Alsop, at the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, Saturday night, paired for the program with Philip Glass's Icarus at the Edge of Time. For information on the concert, visit lpc.co.uk.
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John Adams's music was also the focus of a recent broadcast on Boston public radio station WGBH. On the program, host Cathy Fuller welcomes the St. Lawrence String Quartet to the station's Fraser Performance Studio to perform Adams's String Quartet, which he wrote for the group. For the performance, the St. Lawrence pairs the piece with Ravel's own String Quartet, which inspired Adams's in writing his own. You can hear the St. Lawrence perform excerpts from both pieces live in studio at npr.org.
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