Deutsche Grammophon Released Gustavo Dudamel’s Live Recording of John Adams’ City Noir to Coincide with National Tour, Available May 11, 2010

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On October 8, 2009, Gustavo Dudamel began his tenure as the Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic with an Inaugural Concert in Walt Disney Concert Hall. Deutsche Grammophon was on-hand to record the evening and, to great success, has already released a digital-only recording of Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and a DVD of the entire event. DG released the digital-only recording of John Adams’ City Noir on May 11, 2010. The work will be performed at select concerts on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s US tour with Dudamel conducting.

Adams found a suggestion for City Noir in his reading of the “Dream” books by Kevin Starr, particularly the “Black Dahlia” chapter of Embattled Dreams, which covers the sensational journalism and film noir of the late 1940s and early ‘50s. “Those images and their surrounding aura whetted my appetite for an orchestral work that, while not necessarily referring to the soundtracks of those films, might nevertheless evoke a similar mood and feeling tone of the era,” writes Adams. As the season draws to a close, Dudamel takes the Philharmonic on an 8-city, 10-concert US tour, the orchestra’s first in almost a decade. In addition to performing City Noir and Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, they will offer performances of Bernstein’s Age of Anxiety with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6. Click here for more information on the tour.

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