JOHN ADAMS nixon in china MINT 3 LP BOX PHILIP GLASS STEVE REICH AVANT OPERA

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40

JOHN ADAMS - NIXON IN CHINA 3-LP BOXSET
Rare original issue of the 1st performance of this John Adams masterpiece of post-minimalist music with Edo de Waart conducting.
BOX is in EX condition. Records are in MINT condition.
Original three-LP vinyl issue complete with libretto. The records are in mint condition.
The 64-page booklet, or libretto, is CD-size, not LP-size. When the label was switching over from vinyl to compact disc, this was a cost-cutting measure for the then-dwindling sales of the phonograph record.

Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams, with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams' first opera, it was inspired by the 1972 visit to China by US President Richard Nixon. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1985, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after 1972.

To create the sounds he sought, Adams augmented the orchestra with a large saxophone section, additional percussion, and electronic synthesizer. Although sometimes described as "minimalist", the score displays a variety of musical styles, embracing minimalism after the manner of Philip Glass alongside passages echoing 19th century composers such as Wagner and Johann Strauss. With these ingredients, Adams mixes Stravinskian 20th century neoclassicism, jazz references, and big band sounds reminiscent of Nixon's youth in the 1930s. The combination of these elements varies frequently, to reflect changes in the onstage action.

Following the 1987 premiere, the opera received mixed reviews; some critics dismissed the work, predicting it would soon vanish. However, it has been presented on many occasions since, in Europe as well as in North America, and has been recorded twice. In 2011, the opera received its Metropolitan Opera debut, a production based on the original sets, and in the same year was given an abstract production in Toronto by the Canadian Opera Company. Recent critical opinion has tended to recognize the work as a significant and lasting contribution to American opera.

John Coolidge Adams is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), On the Transmigration of Souls (2002), a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks (for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003), and Shaker Loops (1978), a minimalist four-movement work for strings. His well-known operas include Nixon in China (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China, and Doctor Atomic (2005), which covers Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.

The music of John Adams is usually categorized as minimalist or post-minimalist although in interview he has categorised himself in typically witty fashion as a 'post-style' composer. While Adams employs minimalist techniques, such as repeating patterns, he is not a strict follower of the movement. Adams was born a generation after Steve Reich and Philip Glass, and his writing is more developmental and directionalized, containing climaxes and other elements of Romanticism. Comparing Shaker Loops to minimalist composer Terry Riley's piece In C, Adams says,

"rather than set up small engines of motivic materials and let them run free in a kind of random play of counterpoint, I used the fabric of continually repeating cells to forge large architectonic shapes, creating a web of activity that, even within the course of a single movement, was more detailed, more varied, and knew both light and dark, serenity and turbulence."

Many of Adams's ideas in composition are a reaction to the philosophy of serialism and its depictions of "the composer as scientist." The Darmstadt school of twelve tone composition was dominant during the time that Adams was receiving his college education, and he compared class to a "mausoleum where we would sit and count tone-rows in Webern." By the time he graduated, he was disillusioned with the restrained feeling and inaccessibility of serialism.

Adams experienced a musical awakening after reading John Cage's book Silence (1973), which he claimed "dropped into [his] psyche like a time bomb." Cage's school posed fundamental questions about what music was, and regarded all types of sounds as viable sources of music. This perspective offered to Adams a liberating alternative to the rule-based techniques of serialism. At this point Adams began to experiment with electronic music, and his experiences are reflected in the writing of Phrygian Gates (1977–78), in which the constant shifting between modules in Lydian mode and Phrygian mode refers to activating electronic gates rather than architectural ones. Adams explained that working with synthesizers caused a "diatonic conversion," a reversion to the belief that tonality was a force of nature.

Tracklist

A Act I - Scene I 19:01 B Act I - Scene II 24:44 C Act I - Scene III 19:05 D Act II - Scene I 20:30 E Act II - Scene II 28:30 F Act III 32:45
Credits

Chorus – Chorus Of St. Luke's
Composed By – John Adams
Conductor – Edo de Waart
Directed By – Peter Sellars
Libretto By – Alice Goodman
Orchestra – Orchestra Of St. Luke's
Vocals [Chiang Ch'ing (madame Mao Tse-tung)] – Trudy Ellen Craney
Vocals [Chou En-lai] – Sanford Sylvan
Vocals [Henry Kissinger] – Thomas Hammons
Vocals [Mao Tse-tung] – John Duykers
Vocals [Nancy T'ang (first Secretary To Mao)] – Mari Opatz
Vocals [Pat Nixon] – Carolann Page
Vocals [Richard Nixon] – James Maddalena
Vocals [Second Secretary To Mao] – Stephanie Friedman
Vocals [Third Secretary To Mao] – Marion Dry

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