John Adams
Short Ride in a Fast Machine
Adams is one of America's greatest living composers and one with his own peculiar take on things. His first opera Nixon in China is the tale of Nixon's visit to China in 1972. What could sound stuffy on paper is thrilling in performance - who else could write an opera aria sung by Nixon entitled News has a kind of mystery? Another opera by Adams, The Death of Klinghoffer, is a controversial meditation on the hijacking of a passenger liner and the resulting murder of a Jewish-American passenger. Doctor Atomic is a recent work that dramatises the great stress as the first atomic bomb is tested in the American desert.
Short Ride in a Fast Machine has a history to it: firstly it's one of the pieces that took musical minimalism out of the galleries and lofts and into the concert hall; but it's also the work that was cancelled at the BBC's Last Night of the Proms in 1997 when Princess Diana died in a car crash and was also cancelled, once again at the BBC Proms, in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York.
It is exuberant, brilliantly scored, insistent music. The pulsing knock on the woodblock is soon joined by four trumpets and then the strings, the rest of the brasses and the timpani for an orchestral running-of-the-gauntlet. This is Adams's take on what it is to be exhilarated and terrified by a short, if very fast, ride in a sports car furiously driven to the limit.
Echoes of Americana abound: you can hear the orchestral landscapes of Aaron Copland and the swagger of jazz greats Duke Ellington and Stan Kenton David Brophy puts his foot to the floor of a highly-tuned RTÉ NSO down Route 66 . . . or the M50 at least. Hold on to your hat.
Bernard Clarke, RTÉ lyric fm
IF YOU LIKED SHORT RIDE IN A FAST MACHINE . . .
. . . you'll probably also enjoy these concerts in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's 2007/08 season, at the National Concert Hall or broadcast live on RTÉ lyric fm.
John Adams's popular "foxtrot for orchestra" The Chairman Dances, along with Bartók's second violin concerto, with the remarkable Latvian violinist Baiba Skride, and Beethoven's fifth symphony. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2007/1109/nso.html
More propulsive excitement from an orchestra in full flight in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, elemental, pulsating, inspired music that communicates with blazing intensity. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0502/nso.html
A new piece commissioned by RTÉ from Irish composer Ronan Guilfoyle, artistic director of the 2006 RTÉ Living Music Festival, with Arabella Steinbacher in Shostakovich's first violin concerto and Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony. To find out more, go to http://www.rte.ie/performinggroups/2008/0208/nso.html
JOHN ADAMS, b. 1947
John Adams, the featured composer of the 2007 RTÉ Living Music Festival last February, is one of America's most admired and respected composers. A musician of enormous range and technical command, he has produced works, both operatic and symphonic, that stand out among all contemporary classical music for the depth of their expression, the brilliance of their sound and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes.
Born and raised in New England, educated at Harvard, Adams moved in 1971 to California, where he taught for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory and was composer in residence at the San Francisco Symphony.
Adams's operatic works are among the most successful of our time. Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic, all created in collaboration with stage director Peter Sellars, draw their subjects from archetypical themes in contemporary history.
On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic in
commemoration of the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and won a rare "triple crown" at the Grammys, including "Best Classical Recording", "Best Orchestral Performance."
In 2003 a film version of The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams's second opera, directed by Penny Woolcock with the composer conducting the London Symphony was released in theaters, on television and on DVD. Wonders Are Many, a new documentary by Jon Else on the making of Doctor Atomic, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
Nonesuch Records released Adams's Harmonielehre in 1985, and since then all of his works, both symphonic and theatrical, have appeared first on that label. A 10-cd set, "The John Adams Earbox", documents his recorded music through 2000. The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer (Amadeus Press, 2006) is the first full-length in-depth collection of texts dealing with over thirty years of his creative life. Adams is currently writing a book of memoirs and commentary on American musical life.
John Adams maintains an active life as a conductor, appearing with the world's greatest orchestras. A regular guest at the BBC Proms, he has appeared in recent seasons with such orchestras as the London Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the New York Philharmonic and with orchestras in Atlanta, Stockholm, San Francisco and Detroit.
The official John Adams web site is www.earbox.com
