John Adams - The Dharma At Big Sur

[Thomas Knierim]

This Youtube video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lp_GJGM0D0) shows the finale of John Adam's symphonic work The Dharma at Big Sur. It's a truly mind-blowing performance in which Tracy Silverman plays the first violin. As the cadences are rushing in faster, it gets atonal and cacophonous towards the end. I believe you can make out the Raga idea around which this piece revolves.

The chap who looks like Voltaire is Tracy Silverman. The funky yellow instrument he plays is quite unique; it's a fretless 6-stringed electrical violin. He handles it with utter perfection; it's really quite stunning.

This video is from the inauguration concert of the Walt Disney concert hall which was designed by Frank Gehry.

If you are intrigued, there are more excerpts of the Dharma at Big Sur to be listened to on Tracy's own website (http://www.tracysilverman.com/). I am usually more fond of John Adam's earlier works, but this one is truly great. Give it a try.

Cheers, Thomas

[scameter]

He did play quite well, though the violin had a very odd sound. I wonder though, why was the piece called the Dharma of? I don't remember him mentioning it in his introduction to the piece.

[Thomas Knierim]

John Adams explains it in the video. Big Sur is a county in California, I believe. He describes the experience of arriving at the West coast as "spiritual catharsis".

I don't think the violin sounds "odd". Most of the time it sounds very much like a normal violin on steroids. That is until Tracy hits the lower notes. Then all of a sudden the thing becomes an electric cello. It's really quite amazing.

Cheers, Thomas

P.S.: I believe this piece has been performed at Cincinnati music hall in February. Did you see it, Sonrisa?

[sonrisa]

no I didn't. The music they play at Music Hall isn't exactly my thing

infact, when I clicked into this thread I thought you were referring to our 2nd Prez! I wondered, what does John Adams (the Prez) have to do with dharma?

now Riverbend.... that's another matter! :thumbsup:

[murmur]

I've enjoyed a fair amount of John Adams' work, though I don't know this newer work. I had assumed the title originally was some sort of reference to the poet Robinson Jeffers...

Of Adams' works, Harmonielehre, Phrygian Gates and Simple Tones in Common Time are my personal favourites. --he often reminds me of some Aaron Copland in places...

[CSwriter1]

I think knowledge of Big Sur is important to understanding the title, "The Dharma At Big Sur, and fortunately I found this excellent explanation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur
[edit] Big Sur artists and popular culture
In the early to mid-twentieth century, Big Sur's relative isolation and natural beauty began to attract a different kind of pioneer — writers and artists, including Robinson Jeffers, Henry Miller, Edward Weston, Richard Brautigan, Hunter S. Thompson, and Jack Kerouac. Jeffers was among the first of these. Beginning in the 1920s, his poetry introduced the romantic idea of Big Sur's wild, untamed spaces to a national audience, which encouraged many of the later visitors. Henry Miller lived in Big Sur from 1944 to 1962. His 1957 novel Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch described the joys and hardships that came from escaping the "air conditioned nightmare" of modern life. The Henry Miller Memorial Library, a cultural center devoted to Miller's life and work, is a popular attraction for many tourists. Hunter S. Thompson worked as a security guard and caretaker at Big Sur Hot Springs for eight months in 1961, just before it became the Esalen Institute. While there, he published his first magazine feature in the nationally distributed Rogue magazine, about Big Sur's artisan and bohemian culture. Jack Kerouac spent a summer in Big Sur in the early 1960's, and wrote a novel titled Big Sur based on his experience there.

The area's increasing popularity and cinematic beauty soon brought the attention of Hollywood. Orson Welles and his wife at the time, Rita Hayworth, bought a Big Sur cabin on impulse during a trip down the coast in 1944. They never spent a single night there, and the property is now the location of a popular restaurant. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton starred in the 1965 film The Sandpiper, featuring many location shots of Big Sur, and a dance party scene on a soundstage built to resemble the same restaurant. The Sandpiper was one of the very few major studio motion pictures ever filmed in Big Sur, and perhaps the only one to use real Big Sur locales as part of the plot. The DVD, released in 2006, includes a Burton-narrated short film about Big Sur, quoting Robinson Jeffers poetry. Another film based in Big Sur was the 1974 Zandy's Bride, starring Gene Hackman and Liv Ullman.[12]. An adaptation of The Stranger in Big Sur by Lillian Bos Ross, the film portrayed the 1870s life of the Ross family and their Big Sur neighbors.

Big Sur also became home to centers of study and contemplation - a Catholic monastery, the New Camaldoli Hermitage in 1958, the Esalen Institute, a workshop and retreat center in 1962, and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, a Buddhist monastery, in 1966. Esalen hosted many figures of the nascent "New Age," and in the 1960s, played an important role in popularizing Eastern philosophies, the "human potential movement," and Gestalt therapy in the United States. Big Sur acquired a bohemian reputation with these newcomers. Henry Miller recounted that a traveler knocked on his door, looking for the "cult of sex and anarchy."[13] Apparently finding neither, the disappointed visitor returned home.

The renouned guitarist Buckethead dedicated a song entitled "Big Sur Moon" from the album Colma. The artists feelings on the subject are unknown.