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John Adams (composer)
John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, many of which center around historical events. Apart from opera, his oeuvre includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic, and piano music. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Adams grew up in a musical family and was exposed to classical music, jazz, musical theatre, and rock music. He attended Harvard University, studying with Leon Kirchner, Roger Sessions, and David Del Tredici, among others. His earliest work was aligned with modernist music, but he began to disagree with its tenets upon reading John Cage's '' Silence: Lectures and Writings''. Teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Adams developed a minimalist aesthetic first fully realized in '' Phrygian Gates'' (1977) and later in the string septet '' Shaker Loops''. Adams ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Worcester, Massachusetts
Worcester ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the list of United States cities by population, 113th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester, England, the city had 206,518 people at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, also making it the second-List of cities in New England by population, most populous city in New England, after Boston, Massachusetts. Worcester is about west of Boston, east of Springfield, Massachusetts, and north-northwest of Providence, Rhode Island. Because it is near the geographic center of Massachusetts, Worcester is known as the "Heart of the Commonwealth"; a heart is the official symbol of the city. Worcester is the historical county seat, seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, Worcester County. Worcester developed as an industrial city in the 19th century because the Blackstone Canal and railways facilitated the import of raw materials and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 until Resignation of Richard Nixon, his resignation in 1974. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he previously served as the 36th Vice President of the United States, vice president under President Dwight D. Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, and also as a United States House of Representatives, representative and United States Senate, senator from California. Presidency of Richard Nixon, His presidency saw the reduction of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, ''détente'' with the Soviet Union and China, the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and the establishment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, Environmental Protection Agency and Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Nixon's second term ended early when he became the only U.S. president to resign from office, as a result of the Watergate scandal. Nixon was born ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nixon In China
''Nixon in China'' is an opera in three acts by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams's first opera, it was inspired by U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1983, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after the 1972 trip. To create the sounds he sought, Adams augmented the orchestra with a large saxophone section, additional percussion, and electronic synthesizer. Although sometimes described as minimalist, the score displays a variety of musical styles, embracing minimalism after the manner of Philip Glass along ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Short Ride In A Fast Machine
''Short Ride in a Fast Machine'' is a 1986 orchestral work by John Adams (composer), John Adams. Adams applies the description "fanfare for orchestra" to this work and to the earlier ''Tromba Lontana'' (1986). The former is also known as ''Fanfare for Great Woods'' because it was commissioned for the Great Woods Festival of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. As a commentary on the title, Adams inquires, "You know how it is when someone asks you to ride in a terrific sports car, and then you wish you hadn't?" The work is an example of Adams's Postminimalism, postminimal style, which is utilized in other works like ''Phrygian Gates'', ''Shaker Loops'', and ''Nixon in China''. This style derives from minimalism as defined by the works of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, although it proceeds to "make use of minimalist techniques in more dramatic settings." A typical performance of ''Short Ride'' lasts about four and a half minutes. Popularity, performance and cancellation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fanfare
A fanfare (or fanfarade or flourish) is a short musical flourish which is typically played by trumpets (including fanfare trumpets), French horns or other brass instruments, often accompanied by percussion. It is a "brief improvised introduction to an instrumental performance". A fanfare has also been defined in ''The Golden Encyclopedia of Music'' as "a musical announcement played on brass instruments before the arrival of an important person", such as heralding the entrance of a monarch (the term honors music for such announcements does not have the specific connotations of instrument or style that ''fanfare'' does). Historically, fanfares were usually played by trumpet players, as the trumpet was associated with royalty. Bugles are also mentioned. The melody notes of fanfare are often based around the major triad, often using "heroic dotted rhythms". By extension, the term may also designate a short, prominent passage for brass instruments in an orchestral composition. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmonielehre
''Harmonielehre'' is a 40-minute orchestral composition by the American composer John Adams, composed in 1985. In his memoir, Adams wrote that the piece "was a statement of belief in the power of tonality at a time when I was uncertain about its future" and that it was "a one-of-kind once-only essay in the wedding of fin-de-siècle chromatic harmony with the rhythmic and formal procedures of Minimalism". The composition's title, German for "study of harmony", is a reference to Arnold Schoenberg's 1911 music theory textbook of the same name, a study of tonal harmony. Other theory texts titled ''Harmonielehre'' include those by Heinrich Schenker (1906) and Hugo Riemann (1893). Adams has said that the piece was inspired by a dream he had in which he was driving across the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge and saw an oil tanker on the surface of the water abruptly turn upright and take off like a Saturn V rocket. This dream and the composition of ''Harmonielehre'' shortly thereaf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harmonium (Adams)
''Harmonium'' is a composition for chorus and orchestra by the American composer John Adams, written in 1980-1981 for the first season of Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, California. The work is based on poetry by John Donne and Emily Dickinson and is regarded as one of the key compositions of Adams' " minimalist" period. The work was premiered by the San Francisco Symphony and San Francisco Symphony Chorus, with conductor Edo de Waart, on 15 April 1981, and subsequently recorded it. The UK premiere was on 13 October 1987 at Birmingham Town Hall, with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) conducted by Simon Rattle. Rattle and the CBSO gave the London premiere on 28 July 1990 at The Proms. Music Each movement is a setting of an entire poem: "Because I could not stop for Death" ends with an orchestral interlude that segues into "Wild Nights" without a pause. A typical performance takes about 35 minutes. Timothy Johnson has discussed various aspects of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco
San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of 2024, San Francisco is the List of California cities by population, fourth-most populous city in the U.S. state of California and the List of United States cities by population, 17th-most populous in the United States. San Francisco has a land area of at the upper end of the San Francisco Peninsula and is the County statistics of the United States, fifth-most densely populated U.S. county. Among U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco is ranked first by per capita income and sixth by aggregate income as of 2023. San Francisco anchors the Metropolitan statistical area#United States, 13th-most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S., with almost 4.6 million residents in 2023. The larger San Francisco Bay Area ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shaker Loops
''Shaker Loops'' is a 1978 composition by American composer John Adams, originally written for string septet. The original "modular" score, published by Associated Music Publisher, has since been withdrawn and replaced by a 1983 string orchestra version. This version was first performed in April of that year at Alice Tully Hall, New York, by the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. The string orchestra version can be played either by a septet of soloists or by a string orchestra of any size, where the violins are divided into 3 parts throughout. The work is in four movements. History ''Shaker Loops'' began as a piece called ''Wavemaker'' in which Adams tried to emulate the ripple effect of bodies of water in his music. The piece was a commercial failure, but Adams kept the idea of repeating loops of oscillations on string instruments. He retitled the piece ''Shaker Loops'', both because of the "shaking" of the strings as they oscillate between notes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phrygian Gates
''Phrygian Gates'' is a piano piece written by minimalist composer John Adams in 1977–1978. The piece, together with its smaller companion '' China Gates,'' written for the pianist Sarah Cahill, is considered by Adams to be his "opus one". They are, according to his own claims, his first compositions consisting of a coherent personal style. It was commissioned and written for the pianist Mack McCray, and first performed by him in the Hellman Hall, San Francisco on March 17, 1978. The work was funded by a group of the board of trustees of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Overview The piece is written in a minimalist style, and based on a repetitive cell structure. Simultaneously, Adams' desire to move away from the conventional techniques of minimalism is noticeable. The composition is set in the Phrygian mode, and cycles through half the keys throughout its roughly 25 to 30 minute duration, starting in A Lydian (four sharps), followed by A Phrygian (one flat), then E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Conservatory Of Music
The San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) is a private music conservatory in San Francisco, California, United States. As of 2024, it had more than 440 students. History The San Francisco Conservatory of Music was founded in 1917 by Ada Clement and Lillian Hodghead as the Ada Clement Piano School. In 1923, the school was incorporated as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, becoming the first music conservatory on the west coast. In 1956 the Conservatory moved from Sacramento Street to 1201 Ortega Street, the home of a former infant shelter. It resided there for fifty years, before moving to its current location at 50 Oak Street in 2006. In 2020, the SFCM added the new Bowes Center at 200 Van Ness Avenue (across from Davies Symphony Hall), a 12-story building that includes dorms (eight floors) with acoustic insulation for 400 of its students, 27 rent-controlled apartments for residents of the older building that was replaced by the construction, and some public per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
