John Adams World Premiere of His New String Quartet

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"FOCUS!" festival will highlight the world premiere of John Adams String Quartet No. 2 at Juilliard on January 29, by the St. Lawrence String Quartet. Adams will join fellow California composers Pamela Z, Pauline Oliveros, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Morton Subotnick this Tuesday, January 27, at 7 PM, at the school's Peter Jay Sharp Theater, for a special panel discussion moderated by Sachs. The discussion precedes a concert of music that includes the New York premiere of works by Frank, Subotnick, and Terry Riley.

A major highlight of the festival is the world premiere of Adams’s String Quartet by the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Thursday, January 29. This two-movement piece, written for the SLSQ, is Adams’s second full-length work for string quartet and contrasts with its predecessor, John’s Book of Alleged Dances, which Kronos Quartet premiered in 1994, in that it does not include electronics. The concert begins at 8 PM in the school's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Prior to the concert, at 6 PM, the composer will sit down for a public conversation with Robert Marx in the school's Morse Hall.

Another highlight of the festival will be its culminating event: a semi-staged production of Adams's groundbreaking 1990 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. The composer will conduct the Juilliard Opera Center in this special performance in Peter Sharp Theater on January 31, beginning at 8 PM.

For a complete calendar of events, visit juilliard.edu. There's also more on the festival in the Juilliard Journal, at juilliard.edu/journal, including an overview of California's musical history by the festival's director, Joel Sachs, and a feature by Lisa B. Robinson on John Adams, focusing on The Death of Klinghoffer.

Note: I recently received notice I was not selected for an interview at Juilliard, so I won't be attending this school for my Master's studies. Hopefully, in a few years, they will afford me the same invitation as they have to the above composers, to participate in a composers discussion with the release of new works.

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