Thu 4/4 @ 7:30PM
Sat 4/6 @ 8PM
Contemporary composer John Adams is best known for his operas based on current events and offbeat looks at classic tales. His first, Nixon in China, based on President Richard Nixon’s acclaimed 1972 visit to China, debuted in 1987. His latest, 2022’s Antony and Cleopatra, is based on the Shakespeare play. He’s written operas based on the 1994 California earthquake, the development of the atomic bomb, and the hijacking of a passenger ship and murder of an elderly disabled man by Palestinian radicals in 1985. But he’s also written chamber music, vocal works and orchestra works.
One of the latter is 2009’s City Noir inspired by the Los Angeles for the ’40s and early ’50s, which spawned the genre film noir, with its gangsters, double crossers and dangerous dames. That’s the work that he’ll be coming to conduct at a pair of Cleveland Orchestra concerts this week. University of Michigan music professor Tim McAllister, who played the sax solo when the piece debuted at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will perform in Cleveland.
The program Adams will lead also includes Claude Debussy’s Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, a short tone poem written in 1895 inspired by a poem by Stéphane Mallarmé; and Breathing Forests by 32-year-old Adams mentee Gabriella Smith. Smith’s three-movement concerto, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2022, is based on interest in nature and environmental issues and reflects on the climate change-driven forest fires that swept through her home state of California. It was commissioned for organist James McVinnie who will be performing on Severance Music Center’s newly restored Norton Memorial Organ. “This piece promises an immersive experience, combining somber reflection with a celebration of forest ecosystems and a call to action against climate change,” we’re promised.
Go here for tickets.
clevelandorchestra/severance/adams/