Saxophone Concerto
John Adams (b. 1947)

[2013]

At 25, John Adams left behind his New England roots and the Eurocentric modernism he learned at Harvard to settle in San Francisco. There in that capital of counterculture, influenced by the mysticism of John Cage and the minimalism of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass, Adams developed his own approach to repetitive cycles and stretched-out forms. He began to diverge from the ascetic purity of minimalism, making room for the orchestral opulence and jazzy punctuation that have defined his voice since the mid-1980s.

A key ingredient in the liveliness of Adams’ orchestral sound is his ear for popular music styles in general, and the saxophone in particular—a love inherited from his father, who played alto sax in a swing band. Adams included a quartet of saxophones in his breakthrough opera Nixon in China (1987), and the sax reappeared in a number of works that followed, most prominently in City Noir (2009). It was through that score that Adams met Timothy McAllister.

“When one evening during a dinner conversation,” Adams recalled in a program note, “Tim mentioned that during high school he had been a champion stunt bicycle rider, I knew that I must compose a concerto for this fearless musician and risk-taker.” Adams steeped himself in recordings where jazz saxophonists encountered orchestral backdrops, including examples from Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, and Cannonball Adderley.

“While the concerto is not meant to sound jazzy per se,” Adams wrote, “its jazz influences lie only slightly below the surface. I make constant use of the instrument’s vaunted agility as well as its capacity for a lyrical utterance that is only a short step away from the human voice.” After an extended first part that combines the traditional fast first movement and slow middle movement of a typical concerto, the work ends with what Adams described as “a species of funk-rondo with a fast, driving pulse.”

Solo saxophone; piccolo, two flutes, three oboes, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, three horns, two trumpets, harp, piano, celesta, strings