Pianist Sarah Cahill has written an essay "View from Berkeley: Finding Room for Adams and Imbrie" where she describes how she and her father debated which composer's music would last longest; John Adams or the UC Berkeley academic Andrew Imbrie:
In the living room with a small stack of LPs, we took turns advocating for our candidates. Imbrie's string quartets had substance, my father said. He constructed them on a solid foundation. In contrast, he says his first impression of Adams's China Gates "was that it sounded like something that might be going on in a tinkly upper piano part in a Bartok concerto while the orchestra was playing something substantial down below." I heard Shaker Loops as an electrifying instant classic; he heard 25 minutes of noodling ostinati.
She goes on to describe Imbrie's Requiem, written after his teenage son died and how it has some similarities with Adams' Harmonium. The complete work is available as a Real stream via Art of the States. On first listen, I did not have any strong reaction.
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