The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer (Amadeus) Review

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(More customer reviews)John Adams is probably the most performed living American composer of classical music. And in this book, really a tribute to Mr. Adams, some sixty writers have written on some aspect of John Adams life. The essays are broken down into four major categories: Portraits of the Artist, The Musical Works, Collaborators and Interpreters, and Critical Reception. The book is biographical in part, talking of Mr. Adams early years and his decision to spend his life writing music. Other aspects of the book discuss most of his major works from looking at the content and then critically.

The writers of these essays are a who's who of the classical music world. They include performers (Emanuel Ax, Sarah Cahill), critics (Justin Davidson, Rupert Christiansen), composers (Ingram Marshall, David Schiff), critics (Renaud Machart, Alan Rich), directors (Robert Spano, Peter Spano), professors (Richard Taruskin, Arthur C. Danto), and of course Thomas May who basically put this whole book together.

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Product Description:
The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer gathers a colorful and wide-ranging selection of pieces from leading musical commentators and critics. Included are revealing interviews with the composer and such collaborators as Peter Sellars, as well as eloquent essays by Ingram Marshall, Michael Steinberg, Alex Ross, Sarah Cahill, Alan Rich, and many others. Editor Thomas May has grouped this collection into four sections: profiles of the artist (including a fascinating memory piece from Ingram Marshall on Adams's early San Francisco years), detailed essays on the major works, interviews with some leading collaborators and interpreters, and critical reception of a wide range of Adams's body of work. This reader should be of use both as an introduction for the general reader to a preeminently significant American artist and as a reference for the more serious student or scholar.
Probing, often witty, always eloquent, the essays and interviews in this collection serve not only as a portrait of a preeminently significant American artist, but also as a window on the development of classical and art music in our time and the various cultural factors that shape it.

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