aworks :: "new" american classical music

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams /repurposing art/

An Orgy of Thought:

This Weeks Track: John Adams - A Short Ride On A Fast Machine

We listened to the track a few times and combined all of our ideas into a concept which we developed for the rest of the session:

The Concept: "to explore the faceless nature of modern day office work"

We found the music to be very powerful, very tribal and very much like a machine. In such modern times, the UK is fast becoming a country of vast service networks. We work to serve.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams /aws: part 4 of 8/

Next up in Alarm Will Sound's John Adams concert, a piano arrangement by John Orfe of Short Ride in a Fast Machine. I don't think of the orchestral version as virtuosic but the piano version definitely is. This rendition also provides extra clarity but at the expense of timbral complexity. Joshua Kosman liked the performance:

There is no logical explanation for Orfe's ability to cram so many notes into the span of 88 piano keys, or to deliver them with such fearsome zest and panache. But there he was, banging through the music like Liszt paraphrasing Bellini, and turning a little curtain-raiser into a full-strength hair-raiser. It was breathtaking.

prior kosman review of russian national orchestra playing short ride. aworks posts on short ride

A Short Ride in a Fast Machine. John Adams/Franz Liszt /2005 deaths/

Tim Rutherford-Johnson has his annual list of music-related deaths. David Diamond may be the notable American composer on the list but many others have meaning to me as well:

Lou Rawls, Derek Bailey, Donald Martino, Stephen Mosko, Link Wray, Skitch Henderson, Shirley Horn, Steve Marcus, Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, R.L. Burnside, Luc Ferrari, Robert Moog, Vassar Clements, Lucky Thompson, Albert Mangelsdorff, Long John Baldry, Luther Vandross, Ruth Laredo, George Rochberg, Percy Heath, Niels-Henning Oersted Pedersen, Jack Keller, Bobby Short, Jimmy Smith, Jim Capaldi, Spencer Dryden, Danny Sugerman, Artie Shaw, and Son Seals.

Playing now, appropriately, is Taverner and the Tallis Scholars and earlier today, the John Adams orchestration of Liszt's The Black Gondola, itself a premonition of Wagner's death. Finally, in addition to his own works, Stephen Mosko recorded a wind ensemble version of A Short Ride in a Fast Machine. Indeed.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams /radio airplay/

Art Smoot has several years of data on what 10 US classical radio stations actually played. For example, the stations played works of Beethoven 15390 times, Aaron Copland 3747 times, John Adams 543 times, Schoenberg 323 times, Philip Glass 147 times, John Cage 50 times, and Steve Reich 27 times. For the specific works of  Adams, no surprise about the popularity of the short pieces, although I was glad to see Shaker Loops and the Violin Concerto in the top ten:

1. 186 Short Ride in a Fast Machine
2. 110 The Chairman Dances
3. 30 Shaker Loops
4. 29 Tromba Lontana
5. 25 Chairman Dances
6. 18 Pavane: She's So Fine
7. 16 Harmonielehre
8. 14 Violin Concerto
9. 10 Lollapalooza. On the Transmigration of Souls


10. 9 Common Tones in Simple Time
11. 8 Harmonium
12. 7 Death of Klinghoffer : Desert Chorus
13. 6 China Gates. Rag the Bone
14. 4 Century Rolls. Down East (arr.)
15. 3 Standchen : The Little Serenade. Naïve and Sentimental Music - II Mother of the Man. Slonimsky's Earbox
16. 2 Dharma at Big Sur. Dogjam. Manny's Gym (Century Rolls). Naïve and Sentimental Music - I Naïve and Sentimental Music. Songs (5) (arr.). The Wound Dresser.
17. 1 At the River (arr.). Baudelaire Songs (arr.). El Dorado Part II Soledades. El Nino. Fearful Symmetries. My Father Knew Charles Ives. Naïve and Sentimental Music

robert gable: aworks adams culture wars era. adams official del.icio.us wikipedia google news yahoo audio singingfish amazon. 1986

A Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams /CD covers/

Asphalteden comments (scroll down) on the artwork of various CDs. I'll add this one of American clarinet music as an example of minimalistic/nationalistic/architectural.

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams

On a trombone message board, a high school trombonist asks for help memorizing  her marching band program that includes John Adams' The Chairman Dances and A Short Ride in a Fast Machine.  She says:

The Short Ride part is basically just a bunch of random notes for a long time.

We wish her luck.

Addendum:
• Full Real Audio stream (small orchestra version) via Boosey & Hawkes
• Friendly drawing of John Adams
• Serious picture of John Adams as he contemplates writing strange trombone parts
• PDF scores
• The Short Ride technical notes indicate synthesizers are optional. 

Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986). John Adams

Recitative writes about minimalism and points out the importance of the woodblock:

Choosing the woodblock is not pure happenstance either. It is the lead driver that pulls me into John Adams’ Short Ride in a Fast Machine. The piece has thrust and excitement and pulls away from the concept that minimalism has to be restrictive, diminishing, or exclusionary. Short Ride is explosive and includes as much as possible in as short amount of time as possible, but in the end, it is still minimalism. And that woodblock follows you through nearly the entire piece!