In this instance, Zappa's widespread contempt for 'minimalism' has led me to dismiss several composers without even bothering to listen to them. And John Adams was one of these.
However, due to Alan (& Robert's) recent recommendations, I've started to explore Adams' oeuvre - and it's well worth it.
So far: Shaker Loops, Grand Pianola Music, Chamber Symphony. Soon to come: Naive and Sentimental Music and the Violin Concerto.
It's generous music - not at all the cloying unimaginative repetitions of you-know-who and the other one.* I go for the jamming together of textures, the 'ill-breeding' Adams has been - it seems - accused of by the Music Establishment. These compositions strike me as painterly. As they unfold in time spaces are created, gestures (those ascending & descending lines), motifs (stabs of brass or shrill woodwind), pulses (tapped percussion suddenly breaking into jazz rhythms). Plus some genuinely weird sounds which appear and disappear - in the Concerto something that sounds like factory pipe being hit - certainly not some Feldman asiatic gong).
In fact - strange as it is to say - I'm reminded of Zappa. The lumpy gravy-ness. The sprawl. The Americanness, I suppose.
And the joke's on me - back in the early 90s I had the chance to have dinner with John Adams when his opera was opening in Brussels. I had "a prior engagement". Silly me.
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* Glass & Nyman - in case you were wondering.
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