# What do you think of Adams' The Dharma at Big Sur?



## Guest (Aug 9, 2018)

It came in at no. 2 in Art Rock's game of music by living composers.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I've liked it for years. One of Adams's best.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2018)

I can't say I have ever found myself enjoying the piece all the way through, although there are some moments where I find myself really intrigued by the sounds of the instruments.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

Meh! Adams is very popular like a lot of other mediocre talents. For this kind of stuff I rather listen to Indian music, or Shakti for that matter.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Another Adams work that I really like, but that is seldom heard, is El Dorado. I first heard this driving down to San Diego. I had to pull off into a rest area to hear it and find out what it was.


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## PeterFromLA (Jul 22, 2011)

I attended the premiere of El Dorado, in SF's Davies Hall... I can't say I loved the piece at first hearing, not as much as earlier works by the composer. By then, Adams had lost some of his mojo, though he's gotten it back occasionally since then, including in the Dharma piece, which I enjoy for its ethereal moments.

Can someone provide a link to the game that is referenced by the OP?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

PeterFromLA said:


> I attended the premiere of El Dorado, in SF's Davies Hall... I can't say I loved the piece at first hearing, not as much as earlier works by the composer. By then, Adams had lost some of his mojo, though he's gotten it back occasionally since then, including in the Dharma piece, which I enjoy for its ethereal moments.
> 
> Can someone provide a link to the game that is referenced by the OP?


Game: works by living composers (final)


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## PeterFromLA (Jul 22, 2011)

Too bad I missed out on that game, it would've been fun to participate.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Pretty disappointed in this. I liked Harmonielehre and Nixon in China. This is not nearly as interesting to me.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

PeterFromLA said:


> Too bad I missed out on that game, it would've been fun to participate.


There are about 15 active games at the moment - check them out; you might like one or more.


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## DaveM (Jun 29, 2015)

What do I think about John Adams’ works? I’ve enjoyed all the writings of our 2nd President.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

With its continuous drone (or pedal point) this would be, I presume, the sort of thing millionrainbows would call "spiritual." I'm soon bored with it. And the Buddhist connection escapes me.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Adams does a fair amount of noodling.

Hoodoo Zephyr, a train evidently.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Another Adams work, odd and oddly unsettling. This may put some listeners off their feed.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2018)

KenOC said:


> Adams does a fair amount of noodling.


Well I'd not heard this before, and it took a while to get past the title (never heard of Big Sur, and still can't fix on a definition of dharma). And then, the noodling. Why assemble an orchestra if you're going to give maximum air time to one instrument?

I don't think this is for me.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2018)

Personally I love this kind of John Adams:






And this:






As for Philip Glass, he has an _enormous_ body of work and I have hardly heard any pieces at all from recent years. Einstein on the Beach is my favourite of everything he has done, but I have a soft spot for Symphony no. 8 and Cello Concerto no. 1 out of his recent works. I don't think I quite _get_ many recent works of Adams and Glass, but I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss them as composers.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Yes, both were interesting enough at the start. But I don't think they developed (the opposite was the case after a while!). I see them and their likes as the strongest argument I know for the death of classical music!

Those games are funny things. I often try our works that are getting a lot of votes and more often than not find myself amazed at their popularity even against major masterpieces! But its a good education in how our tastes all differ.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Even though I did not vote for it often (due to other pieces warranting my votes), I like it very much.


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_Big Sur_ is a major work by Adams, inspired by Jack Kerouac's novel and serious studies of Buddhism, the shock of seeing the California coastline for the first time, and two of Adams' mentors, Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. It's a work very much of the moment with a solo part that sound's almost improvised. I find it an alive work with the soloist and orchestra always working in harmony together, never against each other as it builds. It builds toward an ecstatic conclusion that even Scriabin might have liked... Here's Adams talking about it in detail, and when coming across a new work, I like to start with what the composer has to say about it rather than others. I enjoyed the work very much even if I felt like the violin part was played a little bit too gruff and "dirty" at times. I find something quintessentially American about Adams' music with his openness to experimentation. He's an original. "Dharma" in Buddhism is about one's path in life, where one belongs, the principles governing the order of life.

https://web.archive.org/web/20100127095918/http://www.earbox.com/W-dharma.html


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I always liked this piece.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> With its continuous drone (or pedal point) this would be, I presume, the sort of thing millionrainbows would call "spiritual." I'm soon bored with it. And the Buddhist connection escapes me.


You look bored, in your avatar. I recognized the title and buddhist connection immediately, since I'd read the Keroac book. And, yes, it's probably the 'droniest' and most 'spiritual' Adams I've heard, and I can see what he's trying to do here, and he has my sympathies, although I'd rather leave the 'droning' up to Terry Riley. I like Adams' Doctor Atomic symphony the best.

I notice that Lou Harrison's name was mentioned. Harrison's music seems more authentically an expression of his life and being, to me. I detect a lot of emotion here in this 'drone.' I also was charmed by the stories of him & John Cage running around in Chinatown New York, seeing Chinese operas. Poor Lou was so nervous and sensitive that he had to move out of New York and back out in the sticks. That guy was a great American composer. His hand-made Gamelon orchestra was quite an accomplishment of building those great big pipes. Listen to it on the CD posted below.


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## PeterFromLA (Jul 22, 2011)

I used to see Lou Harrison and his partner William Colvig at all the Cabrillo Music Festival concerts. They were a standby, and Harrison was typically honored every season with two or more performances of his works (especially the ones featuring a huge gamelan, which Colvig and Harrison built by hand, and which was named Si Betty, after the new music patron and photographer Betty Freeman).

Harrison started the festival at the local community college, Cabrillo, though the festival became so big after a while that it was moved to many other venues, including UC Santa Cruz and the Mission San Juan Bautista, the latter being where Alfred Hitchcock filmed the climactic scene of his great film, Vertigo, and where I also witnessed a transcendent performance of Arvo Part's Te Deum in 1986 led by Lou Harrison's great champion, Dennis Russell Davies.

Here's a picture of Harrison and Colvig:


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## Lisztian (Oct 10, 2011)

I really like this work, and I'm generally a fan of whatever piece by Adams I'm hearing. I like how he doesn't seem to quite align with any particular 'school,' and his music finds an appealing and individualistic balance between different trends of composition. It's intuitive and engaging.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

millionrainbows said:


> You look bored, in your avatar.


That isn't boredom. Those are bedroom eyes.

Your eyes look as if you've heard one drone too many and will never return.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I kind of like the atmosphere this piece evokes. It seems to me like something that would work better as something closer to symphonic in form rather than concerto. Still I thought it was pretty good.


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## Aloevera (Oct 1, 2017)

I think it's good for a classical rendition of Indian music. Very relaxing


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

These threads on game results are making that game much more interesting. I can now understand better why people voted the way they did. We ought to have more such threads.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> That isn't boredom. Those are bedroom eyes.


Er...well...er...really? I'm a mite confused now...who's giving, who's getting the invite?


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

Thanks. I'm taking your threads as an opportunity to listen to some modern classical music.
I kind of liked it at first listen. The lingering, the suspension.... it's a quality I like in ambient music (classical and ambient music are my favorite genres), but I'm not sure it works for me in this piece. My attention started to drop in the second part but the ending woke me up again and was rather blissful. Unlike Beat Furrer's piano concerto I might listen again to this piece.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

This is one of the few John Adam's pieces I enjoy. It is definitely ambient and very easy to listen to. I'm not a huge "ambient" music fan but I don't dislike it either. This piece works for me.

V


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