aworks :: "new" american classical music

Phrygian Gates (1977-78). John Adams /old (but good) first concerts/

Wikipedialast.fm (of all sources) reports the pianist Emanuele Arciuli is playing a week from Sunday at Old First Church in San Francisco -- Ives' Sonata No. 2  and Adams' Phrygian Gates.

And Arciuli's photo on the Old First Concerts site includes a clearly happy dog...

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wikipedia:

• phrygian gates - The piece, together with its smaller companion China Gates is what is considered Adams' "opus one". They are, according to his own claims, his first compositions consisting of a coherent personal style.
• sonata no. 2 - ...impressionistic pictures of Emerson and Thoreau, a sketch of the Alcotts, and a Scherzo supposed to reflect a lighter quality which is often found in the fantastic side of Hawthorne."

google:

• aworks on emanuele arciuli

Phrygian Gates (1977-8). John Adams /tower?/

 The financial news about Tower Records is not promising and when I visited the Classical Annex in San Francisco on Sunday, although it was still open, the building had a For Lease sign.

Here's hoping the Emanuele Arciuli and Gloria Coates CDs weren't my last Tower purchase. And it makes me want to increase my monthly Amoeba Records donation...

Phrygian Gates (1977). John Adams

Philip Glass on the piano music of John Adams:

John Adams has become one of the best known and admired composers in today's concert music. He has achieved this renown through his widely performed operas, oratorios and symphonic music and is considered by now a true master of the modern orchestra. It may come, therefore, as a surprise to some listeners who come across his piano music for the first time. As it turns out, his piano music is equally evocative -- exploting fully the sonorities and range of the modern concert piano. Far from being adaptations of instrumental work, they represent new sensibilities for the piano on it's own terms -- in turn refreshing, playful and sensual.

That was a quote from the liner notes written by Glass for a CD by the pianist Bruce Brubaker on Arabesque Records.  The CD has music of John Adams (Phrygian Gates, Pat's Aria from Nixon in China, China Gates) and Alvin Curran (Endangered Species, Inner Cities I). 

Amazon samples the CD.

  Brubaker's previous CD has music by Cage and Glass.