John Adams's music has been the subject of much public attention of late, in a The Kennedy Center focus, as score to the new film I Am Love, and in Gustavo Dudamel’s first US tour with the LA Philharmonic, which included Adams's City Noir. Adams, in his Hell Mouth blog, muses on the often difficult transition between the public and private life of a creative public figure.
John Adams and his music have been the subject of much public attention of late, featured, as they have been, in a two-week festival at The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, with the composer leading the National Symphony Orchestra in a number of his works and a reading from his memoir, Hallelujah Junction; as score to the new film I Am Love, starring Tilda Swinton and set for US theatrical release in June; and in conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s first national tour with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the program for which included Adams's City Noir, and which concluded with Saturday’s performance at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City.
New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn describes the ensemble parts of City Noir as "texturally dense and chromatic" beyond even what listeners have come to expect from an Adams score. "Elements that he has long acknowledged as influences—Ivesian harmonies for example—are plentiful, and the work’s three colorfully etched movements are tinged with jazzy percussion figures and solo saxophone, trombone and trumpet lines in which the melodic accents of jazz mingle with mid-20th-century angularity." Read the concert review at nytimes.com.
NPR’s Tom Huizenga surveys the critical response to Dudamel’s recent string of performances, which has been mixed, and suggests reserving final judgment as the young music director gains his footing. He cites the conductor’s “ability to handle big, complex scores” like City Noir as a common source of praise. Read the full story at npr.org.
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For his part, Adams, in the latest entry to his blog, Hell Mouth, offers a very thoughtful perspective on balancing the two very different spheres of a creative public figure's life and the often jarring transition from these very public performances to the very private and ultimately solitary act of creation.
"For those of us who move back and forth between a public and private life, between other-oriented, highly social interaction on the one hand, and the intense, almost hermetic solitude of creative activity on the other," he writes, "the transition is a jagged edge, almost a wound, with raw, sensitive areas of pain that can take weeks to overcome."
Read more of what Adams has to say on the subject at earbox.com.
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