Nixon in China
During his rise to power, Richard Nixon became known as a leading anti-communist. After he became president  in 1969, Nixon saw advantages in improving relations with China and the Soviet Union; he hoped that détente would put pressure on the North Vietnamese to end the Vietnam War, and he might be able to manipulate the two main communist powers to the benefit of the United States.”There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.”Richard Nixon

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opera full

Doctor Atomic
Batter My Heart
Gerald Finley (J. Robert Oppenheimer)
Batter my heart, three person’d God; For you
As yet but knock, breathe, knock, breathe, knock, breathe
Shine, and seek to mend;
Batter my heart, three person’d God;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, break, blow, break, blow
burn and make me new.

Opera A Flowering Tree
A Flowering Tree was inspired by Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and is based on an ancient folktale from India, telling the story of Kumudha, a poor but beautiful girl, who in order to help her family transforms into a flowering tree, whose blossoms bring her both joy and pain, love and redemption.

Girls of the Golden West
The opera is inspired by the 1851/1852 letters of Louise Clappe, who lived for a year and a half in the mining settlement of Rich Bar (now Diamondville, California) during the California Gold Rush.

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ג’ון אדמס
Dr.Atomic Symphony
Doctor Atomic Symphony is a purely instrumental work drawn from the 2005 opera. It includes music from the opera’s overture, the Act II “panic” music, the “military matters” sections from Act I, and it culminates with an orchestral setting of Oppenheimer’s signature “Batter My Heart” aria that closes Act I of the opera.

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Shaker Loops

ДЖОН АДАМС
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Son Of Chamber Symphony

Джон Адамс
ג’ון אדמס
Son of Chamber Symphony / String Quartet

ДЖОН АДАМС
ג’ון אדמס
Harmonielehre

Der Werktitel nimmt expliziten Bezug auf die 1911 erschienene „Harmonielehre“ von Arnold Schönberg, einem Komponisten, zu dem John Adams in ambivalentem Verhältnis steht. Adams studierte in Harvard bei Leon Kirchner, der seinerseits Schüler Schönbergs war. Adams respektiert die Bedeutung und Meisterschaft Schönbergs, lehnt aber dessen Atonalität und Zwölftonmusik unter ästhetischen Gesichtspunkten ab. Die Harmonielehre von John Adams lässt sich als Parodie verstehen, jedoch ohne ironische Absichten. In ihr erscheinen vielfache Bezüge zur Musik um die Wende vom 19. zum 20. Jahrhundert, so zu Gustav Mahler, Jean Sibelius, Claude Debussy und dem frühen Schönberg. Als großangelegtes dreisätziges Orchesterwerk verbindet sie Techniken der Minimal Music mit der expressiven Welt der Spätromantik und des Impressionismus im postmodernistischen Sinne.

Lesson Nº 1 + The Ascension
Glenn Branca has always been a musician positioned halfway between the role of avant-garde composer and that of a rock musician. A pupil and disciple of the masters of American minimalism such as La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich, he has always had to fight against prejudice and fierce criticism. His position was certainly uncomfortable, too academic for rock fans and too “politically incorrect” for academics. In fact, Branca was trying to unhinge all the limits imposed by the rigid schemes of the avant-garde, aware of the fact that those who want to be truly avant-garde should have no limits. John Cage was also able to criticize him, even calling him a fascist ( Luciano Berio also did so for all minimalists) for the excessive rigidity of his compositions, even though he recognized his innovative power. After having created his best known album, The Ascension (1981), a true monument of maximalism played with a classical rock formation (guitars, bass and drums), he tries to approach a different format, the Symphony, as always halfway between rock and academia. Branca will like the experiment and will re-propose it several times in the following decades, to date there are sixteen symphonies (not all recordings are available). Here is how young Branca’s ensemble appeared to the American composer John Adams in one of his first live performances of the First Symphony: “Branca’s event that I listened to at the Japan Center Theater in San Francisco in 1981 was one of his symphonies for guitar . The group didn’t look very different from thousands of other independent or alternative rock bands of the time: guys in jeans and worn t-shirts busy with cables while maintaining that typical distracted expression of rock musicians.

At Present
Who has never contemplated drops of water seeking their path down a windowpane? Drops of water fall on a glass stele; they do not seem to be moving randomly, they wander, follow invisible bends and form letters and parts of letters; they provide glimpses of words […]