journal.nonesuch.com

Nonesuch Events This Weekend

Here is our weekly list of just some of the many events going on across the globe this weekend featuring Nonesuch artists:

John Adams's opera Nixon in China receives its final two performances this weekend, tonight and Sunday, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House in Denver, Colorado, with Opera Colorado led by Marin Alsop. The production is directed by James Robinson and features choreography by Seán Curran. Tickets: operacolorado.com.

Also tonight, the latest concert in Nonesuch staffer Ronen Givony's Wordless Music series includes a performance of Adams's Shaker Loops by the group A Sunny Day in Glasgow and the American Contemporary Music Ensemble, along with Ingram Marshall's Entrada. The concert will be held at the Whitney Museum on Manhattan's Upper East Side and is free. Info: wordlessmusic.org.

The piece will receive a second free New York performance this weekend: the Brooklyn Philharmonic, led by Michael Christie, will conclude a free, outdoor concert at the South Street Seaport Saturray night with selections from the piece accompanied by choreographed fireworks. Info: brooklynphilharmonic.org.

Also on Saturday, at the opposite end of the Earth, Short Ride in a Fast Machine will be included in a program by the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra at Yokohama Minato Mrai Hall in Kanagawa, Japan, with an encore presentation of the program at Suntory Hall in Tokyo on Sunday. Info: japanphil.or.jp.

Adams's Christian Zeal and Activity, which appears on the same album as Short Ride, The Chairman Dances, will be performed by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, led by Lawrence Renes, in Malmö, Sweden.

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Louis Andriessen's opera La Commedia, based on Dante's work by the same name, received its world premiere last night at the Koninklijk Theater Carré in Amsterdam as part of the Holland Festival 2008. Performances continue from Saturday through Wednesday the 18th. The production features soprano Claron McFadden as Beatrice, with Christina Zavalloni singing the music associate with Dante and Jeroen Willems with Lucifer; Synergy Vocals performas a chorus octet. Tickets: dno.nl.

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T Bone Burnett continues leading the band in the Raising Sands tour with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with three stops this weekend: tonight at the Merriweather Post Pavillion in Columbia, Maryland (merriweathermusic.com); tomorrow night at the Asheville Civic Center in Asheville, North Carolina (ashevillenc.gov); and Sunday at the Bonnaroo Music Festival (bonnaroo.com)in Manchester, Tennessee, where Orchestra Baobab will also be performing.

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As mentioned earlier today, Philip Glass's music provides the score to the film Life: A Journey Through Time, featuring the nature photography of Frans Lanting, on Sunday for Day Two of the Detroit Symphony's 8 Days in June festival. Tickets: 8daysinjune.com.

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Emmylou Harris performs at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, outside of Chicago, tomorrow night, kicking off the center's Twilight Concert music series. The Chicago Sun-Times's Dave Hoekstra calls the "music legend ... a logical choice to kick off the green series," given her involvement with the Natural Resources Defense Council's efforts to promote renewable energy and halt mountaintop coal mining removal. Tickets: mortonarb.org.

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Orchestra Baobab continues its month long tour of the States with music from their recent release, Made in Dakar, tonight at the Aladdin Theater in Portland, Oregon (aladdin-theater.com), then heads east for the Bonnaroo Music Festival (bonnaroo.com) on Sunday.

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Sam Phillips closes out her tour of free Borders stores performances and signings of her new CD Don't Do Anything tomorrow evening, 7 PM, in San Francico at the city's Union Square store. Her next scheduled performance is on June 26 at the newly opened Largo at the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles. Tickets: largo-la.com.

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Steve Reich's 1985 work for clarinets New York Counterpoint will be performed by the Ensemble für Neue Musik Basel tonight at the Musikakademie Großer Saal in Basel, Switzerland (ensemble.ch).

His Sextet serves as the score to choreographer Douglas Lee's Leviathan, which receives its final performance of the season tonight at the Stuttgart Ballet (staatstheater.stuttgart.de).

"Enthralling" Film (NY Times) on Making of John Adams's Opera "Doctor Atomic" Opens Today in NY, LA

When John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic premiered at the San Francisco Opera in October 2005, the New York Times' Anthony Tommasini declared that it "must surely be considered the musical event of the year in America." Documentary filmmaker Jon Else was there when the curtain went up, as he had been throughout the previous year, capturing the efforts of the composer and his longtime collaborator, director/librettist Peter Sellars, to tell, through opera, the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, and the start of the nuclear age.

Times film critic Stephen Holden calls the resulting documentary, Wonders Are Many, "enthralling." He describes the working relationship at its core this way:

As you watch Mr. Sellars meticulously assemble the libretto from sources that include John Donne, Baudelaire, the Bhagavad-Gita and a book on the military uses of atomic energy whose words are sung in what Mr. Adams calls "faux poetry," the process suggests the artistic equivalent of splitting the atom. It is fascinating to observe Mr. Sellars demonstrating to cast members the exact phrasing and emotional shading for conveying Mr. Adams's austere but passionate score, and to watch the final touches being added to a facsimile of the original test weapon.

The film was given its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, leading Variety magazine to write:

Art and science form a combustible fusion in Jon Else's elegant and wide-ranging Wonders Are Many: The Making of Doctor Atomic. A dazzling case of the right filmmaker attached to the right subject ...

That review went on to assert that "the film is best seen in cinemas," and today, Wonders Are Many makes its way from successful festival runs to its theatrical debut. It opens this afternoon in New York City, at the Quad Cinema (quadcinema.com) and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema (lincolnplazacinema.com), and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Monica 4-plex (laemmle.com) in Santa Monica.

You can watch the film's trailer here:

For more on the film and the filmmakers, visit wondersaremany.com. To read the New York Times review, visit nytimes.com.

Doctor Atomic makes its Metropolitan Opera debut in New York City this October. For information and subscription tickets, visit metoperafamily.org.

Film Composer Leonard Rosenman Dies at 83

Leonard Rosenman, the Oscar-winning composer of such classic film scores as East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, died Monday of a heart attack. He was 83 years old.

"With the composers Bernard Herrmann and Alex North," writes the New York Times, "Mr. Rosenman was widely credited with bringing film music---long awash in Tchaikovsky-inflected Romanticism---squarely into the 20th century."

Along with North (A Streetcar Named Desire, Spartacus), Georges Delerue (Jules et Jim, Shoot the Piano Player), and Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, Rosenman's works were included in a series of film-music albums recorded for Nonesuch in 1997. Allmusic.com cites the collection, which includes music from the iconic James Dean films East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, in remembering the composer:

Rosenman's music was uncompromisingly contemporary in style, and was among the first film composers to utilize advanced compositional techniques such as serialism and microtones in major motion pictures ... [though] many film score buffs weren't even aware of Rosenman's work until the release in 1997 of Nonesuch's outstanding The Film Music of Leonard Rosenman, conducted by composer John Adams.

Listen to the main title tracks to each film from that recording by Adams and the London Sinfonietta:

East of Eden

Rebel Without a Cause

MSN Must-See Movies: "Sweeney Todd" and "There Will Be Blood"

MSN has announced its list of the upcoming holiday season's must-see movies, and both Sweeney Todd and There Will Be Blood are among the top ten. Soundtracks from both films will be available from Nonesuch this December.

In recommending Sweeney, MSN has this to say "Combine Stephen Sondheim's Tony Award-winning musical of a revenge-seeking barber, Tim Burton's distinctive vision, the charisma of Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, and Sacha Baron Cohen, and you're up for one hell of a bloody (literally) ride."
 
And as for a standout performance, the site singles out Depp, who, the article reads, "is said to channel David Bowie in a rock-star interpretation of the demon barber role. Place your Golden Globes bets now, because he will definitely earn a nomination."

There Will Be Blood, the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson, stars Daniel Day-Lewis as an early 20th-century oil tycoon. MSN praises Day-Lewis's co-star Paul Dano (best known as the dour, Nietzsche-loving brother in Little Miss Sunshine) and sees a Best Supporting Actor nod in his future. Another powerful player in the film is its score by guitarist/composer Jonny Greenwood.

For the complete top-ten list, visit msn.com.

Jonny Greenwood on Composing for Film, Touring Green

In a recent conversation with gothamist.com, Jonny Greenwood discusses a wide range of topics, from the environmental impact of touring to his score for the upcoming Paul Thomas Anderson film There Will Be Blood. The soundtrack is due out on Nonesuch this December.