aworks :: "new" american classical music

The Dharma at Big Sur (2003). John Adams /premiere recording/

Jake comments on Nonesuch's upcoming release of a two-CD set of John Adams' The Dharma at Big Sur and My Father Knew Charles Ives. We were camping and hiking in Big Sur last month but too early to listen to this CD there. Although once, I did hear Marvin Gaye's I Heard It Through the Grapevine on the radio while driving up the "Grapevine" in Southern California.

The Dharma at Big Sur (2003). John Adams /marin alsop/

Marin Alsop begins to make her mark on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra' with Adams' Dharma at Big Sur, Glass' Life: A Journey through Time (a multimedia piece) and his Saxophone Quartet Concerto, and Rainbow Body by Christopher Theofanidas. What she herself actually programmed is not clear, of course.

The Dharma at Big Sur (2003). John Adams /Leila Josefowicz/

An article on the Canadian violinist and ex-Chanel model Leila Josefowicz:

Now she's preparing Adams's latest violin work, The Dharma at Big Sur, which mixes Eastern influences with West Coast styles and ideas. 'I'm quite familiar with the kind of jazz sounds and the improvisation that John has written in, or rather not written in, and I feel strangely liberated playing this kind of stuff.'

It's written for a six-string electric violin, a Violectra, that Josefowicz had made to her own specifications in Birmingham, its shape identical to the fabulous Guarneri 'del Gesù' instrument she plays.

Wikipedia says she was born in Canada but moved to California at a young age.

The Dharma at Big Sur (2003). John Adams /Proms stream/

Dan Mitchell's Music News points to some temporary Real streams of John Adams' The Dharma at Big Sur and Doctor Atomic - Easter Eve 1945 on the BBC Proms site.  Available only through Sunday, August 29th.

In the introduction to Dharma, Tracy Silverman points out that the electric violin part is notated, not improvised. 

Related posts: The Dharma at Big Sur, Easter Eve 1945

Update: Via ionarts, Andrew Clements of the Guardian reviews the recent John Adams Proms concert and makes the following observation about the electric violin part:

The instrument does not make a very varied or beguiling sound; it's more effective in the propulsive second movement of Adams's 25-minute piece than in the first, where it has to spin a long melodic line over a murmuring orchestral backdrop. But in the end only the energy of the music was memorable, never the musical ideas themselves.

Having only heard the work twice via the recent stream, I nonetheless concur.  In comparison, Adams' Violin Concerto has both the energy and musical interest.

The Dharma at Big Sur (2003). John Adams

Walt Disney Concert Hall has program notes for The Dharma at Big Sur, which includes a short Q&A with John Adams:

When the Philharmonic asked me for a new work to celebrate the opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall, I knew I wanted to write something that reflected our collective experience of being Californians. I especially wanted to reflect the experience of those who, like me, were not born here and for whom the arrival on this side of the continent had both a spiritual and a physical impact.

Adams also says that the piece is not improvised, uses just intonation, and was inspired by Jack Kerouac's book Big Sur.  11/29/03

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