John Adams: The Dharma at Big Sur reviewed
(March 2004)
The first new score to inaugurate Frank Gehry’s stunning Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles was John Adams's The Dharma at Big Sur, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen. The premiere on 24 October drew a gala audience and hundreds of journalists to hear and applaud the new work, which provided further evidence that Adams is composing at the height of his powers and continuing to explore new musical territory. Future performances are already planned for London in summer 2004 and New York in 2005.
The Dharma at Big Sur features Tracy Silverman as electric violin soloist, far outside the classical tradition and providing instead an exploration of those Eastern sensibilities that have helped shape the West Coast experience. Capturing the maverick spirit of pioneering fellow-Californian composers Lou Harrison and Terry Riley, Adams’s work employs just intonation, the alternative tuning system which here opens up new sonic possibilities for the composer. Partly inspired by the book Big Sur by Jack Kerouac which travels the Pacific coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles, the new score also draws on Buddhist and Hindu meditative traditions: “Just as Kerouac, Ginsberg and the Beat poets first made the Dharma known to a wider American consciousness, so did Lou and Terry do a similar thing in music. My piece is a recognition of that shift in consciousness that my arrival in California brought about.”
The New York Times praised “the rich intricacies in the orchestra, with haunting stretches of music that seem laconic in some laid-back Los Angeles way, yet tremble underneath with fidgety figures, wayward counterpoint and fractured rhythms... The solo part, played with fleet agility and tangy expressivity by Tracy Silverman, deftly evokes Appalachian fiddle music, an Indian sitar and wistful jazz riffs with wailing hints of Jimi Hendrix... The piece built to an ecstatic final section... a rapturous din so buzzing with piled-on activity and tension that you could not tell whether the music was about to explode or to implode.”
“The star turn of the evening... was John Adams’s new The Dharma at Big Sur, a heartbreakingly beautiful work for electric fiddler and full orchestra, in which high, piercing folk sounds from East and West were wrapped in the richness of the classic symphonic tradition by a composer who understands and loves them all.” Wall Street Journal
“An irresistible tribute to California, Dharma is one big, rapturous bear hug of a score... the violin floats over typically soft Adams sonorities, as complexly colourful as this complex and colourful composer has ever produced... the kaleidoscopic score tingled with lively timbre.” Los Angeles Times
Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning On the Transmigration of Souls received its Australian premiere at the Sydney Festival in January, performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with a new sequence of projected images by Greg Barrett which “had a spare beauty and brought an extra layer of meaning to the aching arch of the music” (The Australian). This month brings an extensive Adams festival to Rotterdam with the first Dutch staging of The Death of Klinghoffer and concerts by the Rotterdam Philharmonic conducted by Osmo Vänskä (24 March - 3 April).
The Dharma at Big Sur (2003)
solo amplified violin—0.0.2bcl.0—4.3.2.dbtrbn.1—2harps—2keyboard samplers—timp.perc(4)—strings
Duration: 27 minutes
> Further information on Work: The Dharma at Big Sur
Photo © Christine Alicino
> News Search
Mailing List
Sign up for news updates and offers via email
SIGN UPFeatured Publication
Britten: War Requiem
Britten's pacifist masterwork, combining war poetry by Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass, is included in the Masterworks Library of full scores, ideal for conductors, students and music lovers.
READ MORECompetitions
