Adams: Piano Music

Veen, Sandra van; Veen, Jeroen van

John Adams has won listeners from far beyond the traditional classical world thanks to his energy over the course of more than half a century in writing music that speaks directly to hearts and minds with undiminished energy, reflecting contemporary concerns and technologies while also crafted with traditional finesse. As well as a composer he has been an active promoter and performer – not only of his own music but of his contemporaries and those who exercised a decisive influence on him as a student in California, including Debussy and Stravinsky. His parents were both jazz musicians and he grew up in a household where, as he says, ‘Benny Goodman and Mozart were not separated’. There is a corresponding harmony between traditional and modern idioms in his own music. Both written in 1977, Phrygian Gates and its briefer pendant or companion, China Gates, were game-changers for the course of Adams’s music. Although his output for the instrument is not large, it was with the piano that Adams discovered the possibilities of slowly moving, patterned textures that had already seized his attention in the compositions of Steve Reich. These works are performed by Minimal Music pioneer and champion Jeroen van Veen, seconded by his wife Sandra van Veen on second piano in “Hallelujah Junction.”

Price: $17.98

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