aworks :: "new" american classical music

I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995). John Adams /and then i listened to something else/

I'm listening for the first time to the Naxos recording of I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky. I hate to say it but it will be a struggle to make it to the end. Would I like this more if I didn't know it was written by John Adams?

  Brooklyn Grit

Or if it had more extensive use of the saxophone?

Or is it the case that an urban "faux-gritty" musical made sense in the fifties but not in the (Nine Inch Nails/Korn/Karen Finley/impeachment) nineties?

While I'm not generally into this type of indigenous music, apparently the composer was:

In my youth I knew all the famous American shows more or less by heart, and my later discovery of “West Side Story” convinced me that this particular theatrical form could actually attain the level of genuine art.

Fortunately, the new Naxos recording of Phrygian Gates by Ralph Van Raat is next.

mangan expresses skepticism re: naxos and brahms. aworks on cage/copland/korn etc. flickr "nyc, newyork, brooklyn grit cluster"

I Was Looking at the Ceiling (1995). John Adams

Naxos has a new recording of my least favorite John Adams work. If I weren't an Adams completist...

Andrew Clements reviews: Dramatically, it is not entirely convincing but there are some good tunes. Adams's own recording on Nonesuch may be definitive in its own way, but this German version, conducted by Klaus Simon and sung in excellent idiomatic English, has a bite and immediacy in the performances that make it a genuine bargain.