Thu 11/29 @ 7:30PM
Fri 11/30 @ 7PM
Sat 12/1 @ 8PM
John Adams’ biography bills him as “conductor, composer and creative thinker.” He’ll be joining the Cleveland Orchestra this week in all those capacities when he conducts a program that includes one of his own pieces “Short Ride in a Fast Machine.”
A New Englander by birth and upbringing (he has two degrees from Harvard), he’s been based in the San Francisco area since the early 70s where he has produced a prodigious catalog of compositions including chamber music, orchestral works, choral works, piano solos and duets, and operas such as Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer. “Short Ride in a Fast Machine,” from 1986, is indeed short and fast (four minutes), scored for a large orchestra.
It’s an appropriately energetic fanfare to kick off the evening, to be followed by a pair of Aaron Copland pieces, “Quiet City” and Suite from Appalachian Spring, and concluding with his own 2015 Scheherazade.2 (for violin and orchestra) featuring Canadian concert violinist Leila Josefowicz for whom Adams wrote it. The orchestra’s principal trumpet player Michael Sachs and English horn player Robert Walters also have solo roles.
Tickets are $31-$165.
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106