Launching the supertanker
Dec 06, 2010The charming old stories of Mozart scribbling out the overture to “Marriage of Figaro” an hour before the premiere and dropping ink-wet parts onto the players’ stands may or may not be true, but they for sure are the worst possible model for any composer who hopes to get a decent performance of his or her own music.
13 Comments Continue ReadingPiloting the Aircraft Carrier
Dec 04, 2010Rehearsing and performing supersized oratorio pieces, especially when they involve the added complications of staging, can be daunting. Keeping the disparate forces united and continually aware of the inner pulse becomes the first order of business. At such times the conductor can feel less like a sensitive interpretive “artiste” and more like the commander of an aircraft carrier or a jumbo jet tasked with piloting it through unknown terrain, sometimes at perilous speeds.
7 Comments Continue Reading"How Could This Happen?"
Nov 29, 2010The Nativity story is one of the simplest and most sincere in the Bible. Images of the scene in the stable of Bethlehem, with Mary and the infant surrounded by astonished peasants and placid farm animals, emphasize the humble circumstances of this particular birth. I pinned to the wall above my worktable several images by Giotto and other medieval and early Renaissance painters to remind me of the power of simplicity in rendering this myth.
19 Comments Continue ReadingThe Zen of Silence
Nov 20, 2010What emerges most powerfully in “Begin Again” is Cage’s enormous capacity for work, together with his exceptional self-discipline as an artist (something learned from Schoenberg) and his willingness to approach every new challenge with a “beginner’s mind.” For this alone it is a book worthy of being read by anyone, young or old, who is faced with the daunting task of a new creative beginning.
19 Comments Continue ReadingIn Bed With Beethoven
Sep 30, 2010Roll over, Beethoven, you and I have to share this bed, whether you like it or not. (Phew…when did you last bathe, dude?)
24 Comments Continue ReadingGlenn Gould and the Flash Flood of the Mind
Sep 19, 2010People absolutely must have a medical explanation to answer their discomfort with the idea of a talented and intelligent artist who was utterly original if a tad odd. Glenn Gould was a hypochondriac and wore winter clothes in the summer. So what?
26 Comments Continue ReadingBehind the Iron Curtain with John Cage, Part 3
Sep 14, 2010Thus I found myself, talking and laughing with John Cage when the vodka, like the neutrons in a plutonium sphere, went supercritical and I found myself boo-hooing into my tear-drenched hands like a confessing felon in some Dostoevskian tale.
6 Comments Continue ReadingBehind the Iron Curtain with John Cage, Part 2
Sep 10, 2010The Russian players were utterly jazzed to be performing this piece for the famous composer himself, and they all but outdid each other with the antic athleticism of their playing. Cage generously beamed his classic smile at them and everyone in the crowded small concert hall broke out into sustained applause, even the sour-looking bureaucrats.
1 Comments Continue ReadingBehind the Iron Curtain with John Cage, Part 1
Sep 06, 2010I fumbled in my bag and pulled out the thin strip of passport photos. In one I was stretching my lips diagonally, exposing my teeth like a dray horse. In another my tongue was sticking out and my eyeballs popping while Sam looked up at me laughing.
14 Comments Continue ReadingWindbag
Jul 07, 2010My mother’s family was half Irish, and my memory of family gatherings is full of the same kind of gab and repartee that I find in the Aeolus chapter of “Ulysses.” The Catholic Church is never far offstage. One moment it’s the butt of scurrilous humor, and then a minute later it becomes the source of a sudden seizure of piety.
13 Comments Continue ReadingEl Tanguero
Jun 27, 2010What impresses most about Astor Piazzolla is the extraordinary clarity of his thought. He could be brutal—just like the counterpoint exercises Nadia Boulanger assigned him —but his musical and intellectual mental processes were both profoundly absorptive and shrewdly practical. In this way he was much like his idol, Stravinsky.
9 Comments Continue ReadingThe Perpetual Orgy
Jun 22, 2010How to write a masterpiece? I haven’t a clue, but if a young composer were to ask me that question on this particular day I would unhesitatingly direct him or her to “The Perpetual Orgy” by Mario Vargas Llosa.
13 Comments Continue ReadingCopyright © 2010 by John Adams
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