Mao Trips The Light Fantastic

The Chairman Dances is another interesting selection of the music of John Adams by the San Fransisco Symphony conducted by Edo De Waart. Like the Shaker Loops cd, this is fairly early Adams and the influence of minimalism is clear but not as overt as in the other compilation. The title track is an instrumental interlude from his opera Nixon In China. It portrays Mao and his wife dancing with the Great Leader represented by chugging music and his wife by a more seductive swaying melody. Christian Zeal and Activity reminded me very much of Gavin Bryars's Jesus' Blood or Titanic and it was interesting to read that Adams admitted influence from Cornelius Cardew and the Scratch Orchestra which is contemporaneous with Bryars. Adams's piece features tape of a fire and brimstone revivalist preacher overlaid by a slowly moving hymn like theme aka the Bryars works already mentioned. The disk also features two fanfares for orchestra, Tromba Iontana and the popular programme filler Short Ride in a Fast Machine.The final longer work is Common Tones in Simple Time is described as a pastorale with pulse, admiting again minimalist roots but with plenty of colour and shading. It's interesting that these earlier John Adams compositions seem to have a longer shelf life than the works he has been coming up with over the last decade. Whether that will be the case over a longer time period remains to be seen.