Adams (The) Dharma at Big Sur; My Father Knew Charles Ives

Charles Ives and Jack Kerouac, John Adams’s musical connections

Record and Artist Details

Composer or Director: John Adams

Genre:

Orchestral

Label: Nonesuch

Media Format: CD or Download

Media Runtime: 54

Mastering:

Stereo
DDD

Catalogue Number: 7559 79857-2

John Adams My Father Knew Charles Ives

Tracks:

Composition Artist Credit
(The) Dharma at Big Sur John Adams, Composer
BBC Symphony Orchestra
John Adams, Conductor
John Adams, Composer
Tracy Silverman, Electric violin
My Father Knew Charles Ives John Adams, Composer
BBC Symphony Orchestra
John Adams, Composer
John Adams, Conductor
My father knew Charles Ives. He didn’t really, but neither did John Adams’s – rather his picturesque orchestral triptych acknowledges a spiritual debt to Ives; both composers grew up in New England and both have a healthy magpie attitude to their source material.

Adams begins with the trademark solo trumpet writing he regularly deploys whenever he wants to evoke Ives. In The Wound-Dresser and On the Transmigration of Souls the Ivesian trumpet poses an “Unanswered Question” but here it’s more like a camera slowly panning towards an Ivesian landscape far below. Brass band music marches onwards and the famous “false” last chord of Ives’s Second Symphony flashes by. It’s difficult to say what exactly Adams has created. It falls somewhere between direct quotation and constructivist allusion, like hearing deconstructed “picture postcard” Ives. It’s fun for sure, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra relishes its follies.

Borrowing the experimental composer Lou Harrison’s ideas about non-tempered tuning – as Adams does in his Jack Kerouac-inspired electric violin concerto The Dharma at Big Sur – gives another spin to a familiar Adams sound world. Tracy Silverman’s folksy material in the concerto partly evolved from his own improvisations, and I fear a one-size-fits-all world-music patois is just around the corner. Nevertheless, the opening section is quite beautiful as non-tempered chords sensuously ebb and flow, and Adams integrates Silverman into his developing argument with a strategic sense of purpose. In the cathartic second section harmonic impetus races ahead, as gong-like sounds in the orchestra suggest inner stillness – a trademark Adams hook reborn.

Discover the world's largest classical music catalogue with Presto Music. 

Stream on Presto Music | Buy from Presto Music

Gramophone Print

  • Print Edition

From £6.67 / month

Subscribe

Gramophone Digital Club

  • Digital Edition
  • Digital Archive
  • Reviews Database
  • Full website access

From £8.75 / month

Subscribe

                              

If you are a library, university or other organisation that would be interested in an institutional subscription to Gramophone please click here for further information.