Hit The Road John

John Adams is mainly known for his orchestral works and operas but this disk features chamber music played variously by the violin / piano duo of Leila Josefowicz and John Novacek and by pianists Nicolas Hodges and Rolf Hind. The disk is titled Road Movies after the piece performed by Josefowicz and Novacek. It is described as travel music, passing through harmonic and textural regions as one would pass through a landscape on a car journey, presupposing that car journey is in America. the motoric pulse of minimalism is there beneath the surface but there is also the weight of tradition too. Hallelujah Junction is a work for two pianos played by Hodges and Hind and it occupies similar rhythmic and structural territory as the title piece. The solo piano works have more of a Debussy inflected feel with touches that remind of jazz improvisation also. Hodges plays China Gates and American Beserk while the disk closes with a return to the eternal pulse in the three part Phrygian Gates performed by Hind. All in all the disk succeeds in being idiosyncratically American in conjuring up those wide open spaces of the road.