CONTENTS

CONGRATULATIONS TO . . ., 3
RECENT DEATHS, 3
CORRECTIONS, 4
LEGATO NOTES: Reviving the Lost Art of the Soiree, 5

LIVE EVENTS
(JANUARY-MAY '03)

Veddy British Music (Kraft) <> Going Into 'Understated Drive' (Kroll), 6
The Music in the Metrics (BLC) <> From Rags to Riches (BLC), 7
Coming Together in New York (Pierson), 8
A Wide Ranging Melange (Cleary) <> "Circles" in the Square (von Bingo), 9
In Search of 'Miraculous' Rock Idols? (Kroll), 10
Das ist Schene (Cleary) <> From Motown to Our Town (BLC), 11
Dropping in on the Global Village (Cleary) <> Time to Remember (Dzik), 12
… and Don't Forget the Publisher (BLC), 13
A Bond Between Composer and Performer (BLC), 14
A Visit to St. Peter's (BLC) <> Observing Movers and Shakers (BLC), 15

DOTTED NOTES from … Kraft, Kroll, Greenfest, Hickey, BLC, 16

SPEAKING OUT! Thoughts on the Pulitzer Prize, 17

AN INTERVIEW WITH … David Holzman, 19

THE PRINTED WORD Berger's Reflections (Kraft), 20

THE SCOREBOARD Sperry's Encores (Drogin), 21

RECORDINGS

Mini but Not Mousy (Cleary) <> Bell's Echoes of Bela (Cleary) <> Just a Few Will Do (Cleary), 22
Many Voices - One Developing Vision (BLC), 23

RECENT RELEASES, 24

THE PUZZLE CORNER, 25

COMPOSER INDEX, 27

BULLETIN BOARD, 27

WEB SUPPLEMENT

A John Adams biography and an interview

LIVE EVENTS

Boston Modern Orchestra Project
Alea III.: The Contemporary Piano
Memorial Concert for Edward Cohen
Variety for Its Own Sake?
More Masters from China
Steele by Finegold, et al Show Their Mettle
A Rave for "Vera"

CD REVIEWS

Angel Shadows: Laurel Ann Maurer
Gloria Cheng: Piano Dance
Viola Aotearoa: Timothy Deighton
Dream Journal
David Felder/Morton Feldman
Eric Moe: Sonnets to Orpheus & Siren Songs
Eclipse: The Music of Bernard Rands
James Sellars: 6 Sonatas + 1 Sonatina
E. Smaldone: Scenes from the Heartland
Robert Starer: String Quartets Nos. 1-3

JOHN ADAMS,
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER IN MUSIC

Biography … discography … an interview

Biography

John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1947 and graduated from Harvard University in 1971. He moved to California where he taught and conducted at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for ten years. His innovative concerts led to his appointment firstly as contemporary music advisor to the San Francisco Symphony, and then as the orchestra's composer-in-residence between 1979 and 1985, the period in which his reputation became established with the success of such works as "Harmonium" and "Harmonielehre". Recordings on the New Albion and ECM labels were followed by a contract with Nonesuch Records in 1986.

Of John Adams' compositions, the best known and most widely discussed is his opera "Nixon in China", given its premiere by Houston Grand Opera in 1987 and winner of the 1989 Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition. With "Nixon in China", the composer, along with director Peter Sellars, librettist Alice Goodman and choreographer Mark Morris, brought contemporary history vividly into the opera house, pioneering an entire genre of post-modern music theater. The original staging of the work by Sellars has subsequently been seen in New York, Washington, Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Los Angeles, Paris, Adelaide and Frankfurt. New productions of the opera have been presented in Helsinki (in Finnish) and Beilefeld (in German).

Adams' second opera, "The Death of Klinghoffer", again a collaboration with Sellars, Goodman and Morris, had its premiere at the Brussels Opera in 1991. Described by Newsweek critic Katrine Ames as "a work that fires the heart," it has also been seen in Lyon, Vienna, New York and San Francisco. Initially known as a Minimalist, Adams has in his mature work harnessed therhythmic energy of Minimalism to the harmonies and orchestral colors of late-Romanticism. Concurrently he has introduced references to a wide range of 20th century idioms - both 'popular' and 'serious' - in works such as his two operas and the wittily eclectic orchestral piece "Fearful Symmetries", which touches on Stravinsky, Honegger, and big-band swing music.

Other orchestral works by Adams include the two often-heard fanfares "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" and "Tromba Lontana"; his acclaimed Walt Whitman setting "The Wound Dresser"; "Eros Piano", a sensuous composition for piano and chamber orchestra; and "El Dorado", a commission from the San Francisco Symphony that addresses the effects of greed on our environment and society.

Adams' most recent chamber piece is "Chamber Symphony", which merges the virtuostic expressionism of Schoenberg with the manic world of cartoon soundtrack music. Since its premiere in January 1993, "Chamber Symphony", scored for fifteen instruments, has met with extraordinary success: more than 25 ensembles have performed or scheduled the work. In addition,

"Chamber Symphony" won Adams the 1994 Royal Philharmonic Society Music Award for Best Chamber Composition. Other honors include the California Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, and the Cyril Magnin Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts.

January 1994 marked the debut of Adams' "Violin Concerto", written in an unusual three-way commission between the Minnesota Orchestra, the London Symphony and the New York City Ballet. The latter organization presented the score with choreography by Peter Martins during the 1994-95 season. His newest stage work is a collaboration with Peter Sellars and librettist June Jordan; entitled "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky", it is described by its creators as a 'song play', scored for seven singers and an onstage band of eight instrumentalists.

In 1991, a survey of major orchestras conducted by the American Symphony Orchestra League found John Adams to be the most frequently-performed living American composer.

Discography:

• The Chairman Dances: San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, conductor; 1987 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 9-79144-2)
• Chamber Symphony; Grand Pianola Music: London Sinfonietta; 1994 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 9-79219-2)
• The Death of Klinghoffer: Lyon Opera Orchestra & English Opera Chorus, Kent Nagano, conductor; 1993 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 2-79281)
• Fearful Symmetries; The Wound Dresser: Orchestra of St. Luke's; 1989 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 9-79218-233)
• Harmonielehre: San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, conductor; 1985 (Nonesuch, 79115-2)
• Harmonielehre: City of Birmingham Orchestra, Simon Rattle, conductor; 1994 (EMI, 5-55051-2)
• Harmonium: San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, conductor; 1984 (ECM New Series, 1277)
• Hoodoo Zephyr: 1993 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 9-79311-2)
• Nixon in China (An Opera in Three Acts): Orchestra of St. Luke's, Edo de Waart, conductor, J.Duykers, J. Maddelena, et al; 1988 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 9-79177-2)
• Phrygian Gates; Shaker Loops: Mark McCray, piano; The Ridge String Quartet with guests; 1986 (New Albion, NA007 LP)
• Shaker Loops; Light Over Water: 1987 (New Albion, NA014; "Light Over Water" originally released 1985 as NA005 LP)
• Shaker Loops/Phrygian Gates: The Ridge Quartet, Mack McCray, piano; 1986 (New Albion, NA007 LP; originally released 1980 as 1750 Arch Records S-1784 LP)
• Shaker Loops; Variations for Winds, Strings & Keyboards: San Francisco Symphony, Edo de Waart, conductor; 1983 (Philips, 412-214-2)

Collections:

• "American Standard (I.John Philip Sousa II.Christian Zeal and Activity III.Sentimentals)" from Ensemble Pieces: works by John Adams, Christopher Hobbs, Gavin Bryars; New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, a.o.; 1975 (Obscure no. 2)
• "The Chairman Dances" from Dance Mix: symphonic dances of Adams, Bernstein, Kernis, Schiff, Larsen, Harbison, Torke, Moran, Argento, Daugherty, Rouse; Baltimore Symphony, David Zinman conductor; 1995 (London, 444 454)
• "China Gates", "Phrygian Gates" from works by Adams, Helps, Brief, Sessions; Christopher O'Riley, piano; 1990 (Albany, TROY038-2)
• "Eros Pianos" from American Elegies: works of Adams, Ives, Marshall, Feldman, Diamond; conducted, and Ives arrangements, by John Adams; Orchestra of St. Luke's; 1991 (Elektra/Nonesuch, 79249-2)
• "Grand Pianola Music" from works by Adams, Reich: Solisti New York, Ransom Wilson, conductor; 1984 (Angel/EMI, DS 37345 LP)
• "Grand Pianola Music", "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" from works by John Adams and David Lang: Netherlands Wind Ensemble, Stephen Mosko, conductor; 1995 (Candos, CHN CD 9363)
• "Phrygian Gates" from American Music of Our Time: works by Adams, Nancarrow, Foss, Hemphill, Rzewski, Wourinen, a.o.; Ursula Oppens, piano (Music & Arts, CD862, 2 discs
• On the Transmigration of Souls (2002) for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir and pre-recorded soundtrack (New Albion Records 584 Castro St #525, San Francisco, CA 94114) Published by Hendon Music (Boosey & Hawkes) Duration: 25 minutes

First performance: September 19, 2002 Avery Fisher Hall
New York Choral Artists
Brooklyn Children’s Chorus
New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, conductor
Sound design by Mark Grey

Prerecorded multi-channel soundtrack (computer sound files operated from a central mixing board located inside the auditorium).

"On the Transmigration of Souls" was requested by the New York Philharmonic as the opening work of its 2002-3 season and to commemorate the lives of those killed on the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center. For more about the work go to

For this work Adams assembled a text comprised of three main sources: brief fragments taken from missing person signs that had been posted by friends and family members in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy; personal reminiscences (principally drawn from interviews appearing in the "Portraits of Grief" series in The New York Times); and a randomly chosen list of names of the victims.

The work also employs a "soundscape" designed in collaboration with Mark Grey that surrounds the audience with prerecorded city sounds (quiet traffic, voices, footsteps, etc.) and the reading by many different voices of the names of the victims.

Interview with John Adams about "On the Transmigration of Souls"

(This interview was originally posted on the New York Philharmonic web site in September of 2002)

The events of 911 affected people in many different ways. How did your personal reaction to 911 influence the creation of this work?

The request to compose this piece came in late January, which meant I had not much more than six months. Normally you begin planning an orchestral work of this scope more than a year in advance. Earlier in the year the New York Philharmonic had already decided on a program that would begin with Stravinksy’s "Symphony of Psalms" and follow it with the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, both of them works for chorus and orchestra. However, on reflecting that these concerts would take place almost exactly a year to the day of the September 11 events, the Philharmonic felt that these concerts needed something that would directly respond to the emotional nature of that anniversary.

Did you feel any uncertainty about accepting such a commission?

I didn’t require any time at all to decide whether or not to do it. I knew immediately that I very much wanted to do this piece–in fact I needed to do it. Even though I wasn’t exactly sure what kind of a shape the music would take, I knew that the labor and the immersion that would be required of me would help answer questions and uncertainites with my own feelings about the event. I was probably no different from most Americans in not knowing how to cope with the enormous complexities suddenly thrust upon us. Being given the opportunity to make a work of art that would speak directly to people’s emotions allowed me not only to come to grips personally with all that had happened, but also gave me a chance to give something to others.

How did your visit to the Ground Zero site affect you? How soon after 911 did you visit?

I visited the site in March, about six months after the cleanup began. By then the area resembled just a huge construction project. It was only when one looked closely and noticed the many little shrines and spontaneous memorials and handwritten messages still in evidence did the lingering mystery and sombreness of the area begin to make itself felt. I had the good fortune to be taken around the area by several policemen who themselves had been right in the midst of the chaos and danger when the towers fell. Even after six months the intensity in their voices while describing the events was palpable.

How would you characterize the musical style of On The Transmigration Of Souls? Are there specific techniques you employ?

My desire in writing this piece is to achieve in musical terms the same sort of feeling one gets upon entering one of those old, majestic cathedrals in France or Italy. When you walk into the Chartres Cathedral, for example, you experience an immediate sense of something otherworldly. You feel you are in the presence of many souls, generations upon generations of them, and you sense their collected energy as if they were all congregated or clustered in that one spot. And even though you might be with a group of people, or the cathedreal itself filled with other churchgoers or tourists, you feel very much alone with your thoughts and you find them focussed in a most extraordinary and spiritual way.

I want to avoid words like "requiem" or "memorial" when describing this piece because they too easily suggest conventions that this piece doesn’t share. If pressed, I’d probably call the piece a "memory space". It’s a place where you can go and be alone with your thoughts and emotions. The link to a particular historical event–in this case to 9/11–is there if you want to contemplate it. But I hope that the piece will summon human experience that goes beyond this particular event. "Transmigration" means "the movement from one place to another" or "the transition from one state of being to another." It could apply to populations of people, to migrations of species, to changes of chemical compositon, or to the passage of cells through a membrane. But in this case I mean it to imply the movement of the soul from one state to another. And I don’t just mean the transition from living to dead, but also the change that takes place within the souls of those that stay behind, of those who suffer pain and loss and then themselves come away from that experience transformed.

How difficult was it to incorporate existing text and audio into an original work, especially considering the profoundly intense subject matter?

Well, if you are an experienced composer, you should not have to shy away from considering "the profoundly intense". I have certainly confronted deep emotions in my music before, certainly in works like "Harmonium", which has poetry by John Donne and Emily Dickinson, "The Wound-Dresser" with its Whitman texts about the suffering and death of young men and boys during war time, and in "The Death of Klinghoffer", my opera about terrorism and the assassination of an elderly American Jew.

Finding the right text to set is half the challenge to creating such a piece. In the case of "Souls", I realized immediately that this event–"9/11"–was already so well documented, the drama so overdescribed and the images so overexposed that I didn’t really need to worry about an "exposition" of my material. Every listener hearing this piece will already know the story. So, in a way, that kind of "numbing familiarity" gave me a certain freedom to work with the materials. I had no desire to create a musical "narrative" or description. Nothing could be more distasteful and banal. However, something I had seen on an amateur video taken minutes after the first plane had hit the first tower stuck in my mind: it was an image of millions and millions of pieces of paper floating out of the windows of the burning skyscraper and creating a virtual blizzard of white paper slowly drifting down to earth. The thought of so many lives lost in an instant–thousands–and also the thought of all these documents and memos and letters, faxes, spreadsheets and God knows what, all human record of one kind or another–all of this suggested a kind of density of texture that I wanted to capture in the music, but in an almost freeze-frame slow motion.

So I eventually settled on a surprisingly small amount of text. And this text falls into three categories. One is the simple reading of names, like a litany. I found friends and family members with different vocal timbres and asked each to read from the long list of victims. Then I made a sort of mantra-like composition out of the tape-recorded reading of these names, starting with the voice of a nine year-old boy and ending with that of two middle aged women, both mothers themselves. I mixed this with taped sounds of the city–traffic, people walking, distant voices of laughter or shouting, trucks, cars, sirens, steel doors shutting, brakes squealing–all the familiar sounds of the big city which are so common that we usually never notice them.

While a recording of the reading of names and the city noises quietly surrounds the audience, the onstage chorus sings texts that I took from missing-persons signs that had been posted by the families of the victims in the area around Ground Zero. These signs, photos of which were taken by Barbara Hawes, the New York Philharmonic’s archivist, had tremendous poignancy. Most had been hastily written and xeroxed, usually with a snapshot photo along with a physical description and often a heart-wrenching little message at the end, something like "Please come home, Louie. We miss you and we love you." What I discovered about the language of these messages was that it was invariably of the most simple and direct kind. No one stunned by the shock of a sudden loss like this has time nor inclination to speak or write with eloquent or flowerly language. Rather one speaks in the plainest words imaginable. When we say "Words fail" in situations like this, we mean it. So I realized that one of the great challenges of composing this piece would be finding a way to set the humblest of expressions like "He was the apple of my father’s eye", or "She looks so full of life in that picture."

Do the adult and children's choruses play differentiated roles in this work? How would you characterize their roles?

It’s common to give the children’s choir a certain "ethereal" or "angelic" role in a big concert piece. Mahler does that in his Eighth Symphony, and Benjamin Britten takes advantage of their innate "innocence" in his "War Requiem". I didn’t do quite the same thing. I wanted the children’s choir not just for these qualities but also because theirs is acoustically and timbrally a very very different sound from the mature voices of an adult chorus. So I used them a lot and I didn’t isolate them or give them the usual "innocent" role. In fact they are right there in the thick of things, singing along with the adults and the orchestra. I first used children’s choir in my Nativity oratorio, "El Niño", and they appear there only at the very end, singing a folk-like song about the palm tree in the desert, an archetype of the eternal feminine. It was such a powerful effect to play the children’s sound off that of the adults that I determined to take it much further in "Souls".

Your past works have shown that art can be a true agent in healing both the individual and the collective. Do you see this work as a healing force?

I am always nervous with the term "healing" as it applies to a work of art. I am reminded that we Americans can find a lot of things "healing". These days a criminal sentenced to death is executed and then we speak of "healing". It’s perplexing. So it’s not my intention to attempt "healing" in this piece. The event will always be there in memory, and the lives of those who suffered will forever remain burdened by the violence and the pain. Time might make the emotions and the grief gradually less acute, but nothing, least of all a work of art, is going to heal a wound of this sort.

Instead, the best I can hope for is to create something that has both serenity and the kind of "gravitas" that those old cathedrals possess. Modern people have learned all too well how to keep our emotions in check, and we know how to mask them with humor or irony. Music has a singular capacity to unlock those controls and bring us face to face with our raw, uncensored and unattenuated feelings. That is why during times when we are grieving or in need of being in touch with the core of our beings we seek out those pieces which speak to us with that sense of gravitas and serenity.

copyright © 2002 by John Adams