Adams
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Cage 100
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Today (September 5), John Cage would have been 100 years old. A few weeks ago, I went to the John Cage Centenary Celebration at the BBC Proms. Cage is probably best know for 4′33″, his infamous 1952 piece consisting of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence (originally in three movements — although he eventually…
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Adams and Glass in London
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I steeped myself in some imported culture this week — modern classical music by two of the most famous living American composers. Thursday evening I went over to the Barbican to hear the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by John Adams, performing his own new City Noir, written about Los Angeles in honor of Gustavo Dudamel’s…
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Doctor Atomic
I went to see and hear John Adams’ recent opera Doctor Atomic at the ENO last night. One of my physicist-companions was my friend, fellow blogger and cosmologist Peter Coles, and he has already applied his greater musical knowledge to the task, so I won’t attempt an overall review. In short, Doctor Atomic is the…
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Atomic quote
The nightmare of all art, as well as of all politics, is generalities. You cannot generalize. You’ve got to keep things as specific to the minute, as down to the wire, as possible. –Peter Sellars in Alex Ross’s “Countdown” (from The New Yorker), on Dr. Atomic, the new opera about physicist Robert Oppenheimer and the…
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