I have a hard time imagining that anybody who enjoyed Alex Ross‘ excellent history of 20th Century classical music, The Rest Is Noise, wouldn’t also get something out of Hallelujah Junction, the entertaining, occasionally punchy, memoirs of composer John Adams. The two books complement each other well—Ross forcefully argues that music history was a chaotic mix of ideas, not a straightforward march from Stravinsky to Serialism to Minimalism, and throughout his book Adams offers a similar defense of the same notion. (Ross is credited in the acknowledgments, too.)

Plenty of listeners tend to think of Adams primarily as a Minimalist—he matured as a composer in San Francisco in the 70s, studying the same experimentalists that Terry Riley and Steve Reich did—but he knows his Wagner and Webern, and he’s not afraid to take a few whacks at some of his contemporaries. Philip Glass, for instance, gets a mild spanking: “[I]n general I have had the feeling that he rarely troubles himself much with delving into new possibilities or combinations for the many different instruments that he writes for.” His harshest critiques, though, are reserved for the many critics who came out during the performances of his 1991 opera about the hijacking of the Achille Lauro, The Death of Klinghoffer. Adams has little patience for folks who appreciated how “evenhanded” he was in addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (”I did not keep a running account of how much ‘noble’ or ‘beautiful’ music was accorded to the hijackers as opposed to how much was given to the hostages or to the Jews”), and he fires both barrels at Stravinsky scholar Richard Taruskin, who wrote an article in the New York Times after 9/11 that Klinghoffer should never be performed again. Adams’ neat trick is to let Taruskin’s own words undercut his argument, befitting a composer with a fine understanding of subtlety and counterpoint. That’s not to say that Hallelujah Junction was written to settle scores, just that it’s a spirited work from an artist who obviously bears a few scars from being called upon to defend every new idea he has.

Adams reads tonight, Nov. 12, at 7 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW. Call (202) 364-1919 for more info.

Pictured: Friel
Saturday:

Felix Mendelssohn was one of those kids you hated in middle school. His dad was a banker, his grandfather was a famous Socratic philosopher who inspired the Jewish Enlightenment, his sister married some hotshot mathematician—you know the type. Felix himself was a child prodigy who drew comparisons to Mozart and began writing major orchestral pieces while still in diapers. Whether it was piano lessons in Paris or aesthetics classes in Berlin, nothing was too good for daddy’s little man, who still found time to learn four languages and hobnob with the likes of Hegel and Goethe. He also composed 12 sinfonias (Italian-inspired baroque symphonies) by the time he was 14, about the same age you were devoting your considerably more limited creative talents to bad mix tapes and acne cover-up. The Marine Chamber Orchestra performs his Sinfonia No. 12 in G minor, along with the second of only two violin concerti written by Bach, and Dvorak’s Serenade in E for Strings. THE MARINE CHAMBER ORCHESTRA PERFORMS AT 7:30 P.M. AT NORTHERN VIRGINIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE’S SCHLESINGER CONCERT HALL AND ARTS CENTER, 3001 N. BEAUREGARD ST., Alexandria. FREE. (202) 433-4011. —Mike Paarlberg

Sunday:

“Noise music” isn’t often uttered in the same breath as “accessible,” but Brooklyn’s Dan Friel has routinely found ways to connect the two. As the frontman for the quartet Parts & Labor, Friel has penned fist-pumping anthems for several years, using annihilated keyboard lines to complicate the group’s songwriting. The increased emphasis on pop-punk vocal hooks since its 2003 debut, Groundswell, may not be particularly appealing for noise purists, but it’s certainly exposed the band to a larger indie-rock constituency. Friel’s first solo full-length is a place where everyone can get along, championing addictive electronic melodies among breakbeat blasts and digital overload. The fittingly-titled Ghost Town plays like an 8-bit epic Western, crafted from layered choruses of an old toy keyboard but still packing the punch of a Parts & Labor track. “Noise pop” may seem like an oxymoron, but in Friel’s case, it works. DAN FRIEL PERFORMS WITH INSECT FACTORY, MIND OVER MATTER MUSIC OVER MIND, AND PROJECTION: ZERO AT 9:30 P.M. AT THE VELVET LOUNGE, 915 U ST. NW. $8. (202) 462-3213. —Cole Goins

The Library of Congress has posted a preliminary schedule of concerts in the 2008-2009 series at the Coolidge Auditorium. Notable are several concerts commemorating the centennials of two giants of modern composition, Olivier Messiaen and Elliott Carter (the latter of whom is still living).

All these concerts are free of charge, but it’s generally a good idea to get tickets in advance (through Ticketmaster, unfortunately, so you pay a $4ish service charge). Still, I’ve never had a problem getting tickets at the door if I didn’t mind sitting way at the back of the auditorium. Tickets are not available yet but availability dates are listed in the schedule.

I wanted to avoid making anyone at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall feel like a spectacle, so I ducked into the gift shop to jot down a few notes. In the lobby, mostly middle-aged Baltimore Symphony Orchestra patrons milled about in tie-dye t-shirts, teashades, and sunflower dresses. At 7:14 p.m. I had detected my first (and, sadly, only) whiff of marijuana, emanating from a group of youngish gentlemen hovering by a close-up photo of John and Yoko. Now a man was performing some kind of chi remedy on a guy with a broken wrist, cupping his hands and sending waves of healing energy through the afflicted’s arm. Carolyn Garcia—you may know her as Mountain Girl—chatted with folks, many of whom sheepishly asked her to sign their T-shirts. One of the T-shirts read “Deadheads for Obama,” and approximately two out of every three conversations included the phrase, “When I saw them back in 1977…” Meanwhile, a jester pranced around with a handful of flowers. “Every lady gets a flower,” he chanted. “Every pretty lady.” One such lady ingeniously converted her cleavage into a vase.

I surveyed the gift shop. A large woman with a hairnet and a dancing-bear muumuu was browsing. This was the world premiere performance of Lee Johnson’s Dead Symphony No. 6, “An Orchestral Tribute to the Music of the Grateful Dead”—not to mention Jerry Garcia’s 66th birthday—and the store’s silly musical trinkets and pretentious classical recordings seemed ill-suited to the evening’s proceedings. That is, except for one small novelty book, an edition of the “Wisdom from our Elders” series entitled Age Doesn’t Matter Unless You’re a Cheese.

Steve Harq–a short, smiling, gray-bearded man in purple tie-dye who was a beacon of ebullience as he bounced around the lobby–proudly embodied that philosophy. “Jerry’s what brought me here,” he said. “That was the best chapter of my life, 25 years on Dead tour. I think it’s great that someone took that spirit–the spirit of Jerry and Robert Hunter—and is using it, which is what Jerry would’ve liked. He was so diverse in his music. He—I’m sure he’s smiling and saying, ‘That’s fucking cool!’”

More on the concert, plus audio tracks, after the jump.

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Everyone seemed to enjoy the Kennedy Center’s Salute to Leonard Slatkin except Leonard Slatkin. Rather than savor the one night everyone was sure to be nice to him, the outgoing National Symphony Orchestra music director looked like he was in a rush to get it over with. Slatkin hurriedly shuffled between the conductor’s stand and offstage, at one point cutting off the audience at the start of a standing ovation. He never said a word until the end of the program, and even his brief remarks were less than upbeat, acknowledging the cloud under which he was leaving after his contentious 12-year tenure. He referred to both his supporters and those who wrote him “sometimes not so wonderful letters,” and “some…who questioned what I was thinking at the time.”

“What was he thinking?” was apparently also the subject of the video tribute to him after intermission, featuring a photo montage of Slatkin wearing silly hats and some of his more famously gimmicky performances (cramming 10 grand pianos on stage for “Piano 2000”) that wowed audiences and made some critics cringe. Read the rest of this entry »