City Noir and Saxophone ConcertoJohn Adams

Noir is a peculiarly American affect. A sensory and emotional tonality, it has become a genre of its own, in movies, novels, music, and even in clothing styles. Its roots lie in the dystopian mood of postwar urban America with its psychological uncertainties and unpredictable, often jagged shifts between emotional highs and lows. The iconic black and white photographs of Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) with their harsh and pitiless representations of city life, its victims and hangers-on, its trashy glamour and its random violence, set the tone for noir even better than any particular Hollywood screen evocation. But, even with the success of writers like Raymond Chandler, it was nonetheless the movies that did the most to define noir as a readily definable constellation of stylistic tropes.

City Noir is a symphony that may also be experienced as the soundtrack to an imagined noir film. Since my childhood, I’d been both entranced and deeply frustrated by the music to these films – entranced by their power to evoke instantaneously the mood of film; frustrated because no single musical cue ever lasted for more than a minute or more.

When I was asked to compose a piece for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and its newly appointed music director, Gustavo Dudamel, I decided that this piece should link to Los Angeles’ past. Hence theidea arose to write an imagined ideal film-noir score that would be a fully formed symphonic structure.

City Noir is also an example of another American genre, jazz-inflected orchestra music. This is not the same as “symphonic jazz,” or what composer Gunther Schuller coined Third Stream. It is essentiallysymphonic music that incorporates some expressive inflections and harmonic techniques from jazz practice without employing the improvisatory nature of its performance. (In that sense, the composer, in the course of the writing, did all the “improvisation.”)

“The City and Its Double” is a title whimsically borrowed and tweaked from Artaud. I meant to express the idea that the city on the surface is all activity and constant motion while its “double,” its darker self, is secretive, alternately sensual, ecstatic, brooding, and violent.

After a “widescreen” explosive opening, the woodwinds, accompanied by a nervous jazz drum patter, scurry hurriedly up and down a series of ever more precipitous scales in the manner of one of those frenetic bebop improvisations by the likes of Jackie McLean or Sonny Stitt.

The first of several virtuoso alto sax solos follows, with the instrument chattering and fluttering over the continually growing activity underneath. An emerging wall of brass takes over, the climax of which is relieved by a lush, lyrical violin melody that alternately soars and plunges in wide, expressive leaps.

The movement progresses with the same sort of highly charged and unpredictable energy of a noir scene. Moments of repose last only long enough to be interrupted by another irruption of unsettling energy and threatened violence. “The City and Its Double” peaks with the appearance of a bounding melody in the horns and celli, a motif that may have been subliminally suggested by my having been conducting Strauss’s Don Juan during the piece’s conception.

In “The Song Is for You,” long, languid, sometimes bluesy melodies arise out of a haze of luminous sonorities, with rippling figurations in the harps, keyboards, and vibraphone floating to the surface like smoke rings in a dark room. A long trombone solo, at first slow and melancholy, gradually takes on movement and leads into a rude interruption, another orchestral “pile on,” with pounding

drums and trumpet tattoos. But this is short lived, and the original lyric repose of the movement reasserts itself with a quiet viola solo echoing the earlier blues-inflected melody.

“Boulevard Night” begins with a slow camera pan of a distant city skyline. A moody trumpet solo lingers over delicate shards of harmony. Several violent strokes interrupt this quiet reverie, and they launch a chugging, grinding pulse machine that alternately speeds up and slows down while the alto sax wails a cocky melody, an idée fixe that governs the rest of the movement. The music becomes more and more brazen, like the snarky, heavily made-up faces in a David Lynch film. A wild and manic “scat” passage for sax and vibes rides over nervous percussion and stinging brass “bullets,” ushering in a final sequence of massed brass chords and a salsa-flavored beat that brings City Noir to an exuberant close.

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The Saxophone Concerto was composed in early 2013, the first work to follow the huge, three-hour oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary. One would normally be hard put to draw lines between two such disparate creations. The first work deals with such matters as crucifixion, raising thedead, and the trials of battered women. The other has as its source my life-long exposure to the greatjazz saxophonists, from the swing era through the likes of Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Wayne Shorter. Nonetheless there are peculiar affinities shared by both works, particularly in the use of modal scales and the way they color the emotional atmosphere of the music. Both works are launched by a series of ascending scales that energetically bounce back and forth among various modal harmonies.

American audiences know the saxophone almost exclusively via its use in jazz, soul, and pop music. The instances of the saxophone in the classical repertory are rare, and the most famous appearances amount to only a handful of solos in works by Ravel (his Boléro and his orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition), by Prokofiev (Lieutenant Kijé Suite and Romeo and Juliet), Milhaud (La création du monde) and of course the “Jet Song” solo in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, probably one of the most immediately recognizable five-note mottos in all of music. Beyond that, the saxophone appears to be an instrument that classical composers employ at best occasionally and usually only for “special” effect. It is hard to believe that an instrument that originated in such straight-laced circumstances – it was designed in the mid nineteenth century principally for use in military bands in France and Belgium and was intended to be an extension of the brass family – should have ended up as the transformative vehicle for vernacular music (jazz, rock, blues, and funk) in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, its integration into the world of classical music has been a slow and begrudged one.

to Stravinsky, Bartók, and Ravel. Another album, Charlie Parker and Strings, from 1950, although more conventional in format, nonetheless helped to set a scenario in my mind for the way the alto sax could float and soar above an orchestra. Another album that I’d known since I was a teenager, New Bottle Old Wine, with Canonball Adderley and that greatest of all jazz arrangers, Gil Evans, remained in mind throughout the composing of the new concerto as a model to aspire to.

Classical saxophonists are normally taught a “French” style of producing a sound with a fast vibrato very much at odds with the looser, grittier style of a jazz player. Needless to say, my preference is for the latter “jazz” style playing, and in the discussions we had during the creation of the piece, I returned over and over to the idea of an “American” sound for Tim to use as his model. Such a change is no small thing for a virtuoso schooled in an entirely different style of playing. It would be like asking a singer used to singing Bach cantatas to cover a Billie Holiday song.

While the concerto is not meant to sound jazzy per se, 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 that of the human voice. The form is by now a familiar one for those who know my orchestral pieces, as I’ve used it in my Violin Concerto, in City Noir, and in my piano concerto Century Rolls. It begins with one long first part combining a fast movement with a slow, lyrical one. This is followed by a shorter second part with its “fast, driving pulse.”

The concerto lasts roughly thirty-two minutes, making it an unusually expansive statement for an instrument that is still looking for its rightful place in the symphonic repertory.

—March 2014

Having grown up hearing the sound of the saxophone virtually every day – my father had played alto in swing bands during the 1930s and our family record collection was well stocked with albums by the great jazz masters – I never considered the saxophone an alien instrument. My 1987 opera Nixon in China is almost immediately recognizable by its sax quartet, which gives the orchestration its special timbre. I followed Nixon with another work, Fearful Symmetries, that also features a sax quartet in an even more salient role. 2009’s City Noir featured a fiendishly difficult solo part for alto sax, a trope indebted to the wild and skittish styles of the great bebop and post-bop artists such as Charlie Parker, Lennie Tristano, and Eric Dolphy. Finding a sax soloist who could play in this style but who was sufficiently trained to be able to sit in the middle of a modern symphony orchestra was a difficult assignment. But fortunately I met Tim McAllister, who is quite likely the reigning master of the classical saxophone, an artist who while rigorously trained is also aware of the jazz tradition.

When one evening during a dinner conversation 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. His exceptional musical personality had been the key ingredient in performances of City Noir, and I felt that I’d only begun to scratch the surface of his capacities with that work.

A composer writing a violin or piano concerto can access a gigantic repository of past models for reference, inspiration, or even cautionary models. But there are precious few worthy concertos for saxophone, and the extant ones did not especially speak to me. But I knew many great recordings from the jazz past that could form a basis for my compositional thinking, among them Focus, a 1961 album by Stan Getz for tenor sax and an orchestra of harp and strings arranged by Eddie Sauter. Although clearly a “studio” creation, this album featured writing for the strings that referred

ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY

David Robertson

Music Director

FIRST VIOLINS

David Halen

Concertmaster

Heidi Harris

Associate Concertmaster

Celeste Golden Boyer

Second Associate Concertmaster

Erin Schreiber

Assistant Concertmaster

Dana Edson Myers

Jessica Cheng

Charlene Clark

Ann Fink

Emily Ho

Silvian Iticovici

Second Associate Concertmaster

Emeritus

Helen Kim

Joo Kim

Xiaoxiao Qiang

Manuel Ramos

Angie Smart

Hiroko Yoshida

Ellen dePasquale**

Melody Lee**

SECOND VIOLINS

Alison Harney

Principal

Kristin Ahlstrom

Associate Principal

Eva Kozma

Assistant Principal

Rebecca Boyer Hall

Nicolae Bica

Deborah Bloom

Lisa Chong

Elizabeth Dziekonski

Lorraine Glass-Harris

Ling Ling Guan

Jooyeon Kong

Asako Kuboki

Wendy Plank Rosen

Shawn Weil

Cecilia Belcher**

VIOLAS

Beth Guterman Chu

Principal

Kathleen Mattis

Associate Principal

Christian Woehr

Assistant Principal

Gerald Fleminger

Susan Gordon

Leonid Gotman

Morris Jacob

Di Shi

Shannon Farrell Williams

Eva Stern**

Chris Tantillo**

CELLOS

Daniel Lee

Principal

Melissa Brooks

Associate Principal

Catherine Lehr

Assistant Principal

Anne Fagerburg

James Czyzewski

David Kim

Alvin McCall

Bjorn Ranheim

Elizabeth Chung**

Davin Rubicz**

DOUBLE BASSES

Erik Harris

Principal

Carolyn White

Associate Principal

Christopher Carson

Assistant Principal

David DeRiso

Warren Goldberg

Sarah Hogan

Donald Martin

Ronald Moberly

HARP

Allegra Lilly

Principal

Frances Tietov ◊- 1

Megan Stout ◊- 1

FLUTES

Mark Sparks

Principal

Andrea Kaplan

Associate Principal

Jennifer Nitchman

Ann Choomack

PICCOLO

Ann Choomack

Linda Toote ◊- 1

OBOES

Peter Bowman

Principal

Barbara Orland

Acting Co-Principal

Philip Ross

Acting Co-Principal

Cally Banham

Michelle Duskey**

ENGLISH HORN

Cally Banham

CLARINETS

Scott Andrews

Principal

Diana Haskell

Associate Principal

Tina Ward

James Meyer

Timothy Zavadil**

E-FLAT CLARINET

Diana Haskell

BASS CLARINET

James Meyer

Timothy Zavadil**

ALTO SAXOPHONE

Timothy McAllister ◊- 1

BASSOONS

Andrew Cuneo

Principal

Andrew Gott

Associate Principal

Felicia Foland

Andrew Thompson

CONTRABASSOON

Andrew Thompson

HORNS

Roger Kaza

Principal

Thomas Jöstlein

Associate Principal

James Wehrman

Tod Bowermaster

Lawrence Strieby

Julia Erdmann**

Anna Spina**

Tricia Jöstlein ◊- 1

TRUMPETS

Karin Bliznik

Principal

† Thomas Drake

Associate Principal

Michael Walk

Caroline Schafer**

Kevin Cobb**

Mark Hyams ◊- 1

TROMBONES

† Timothy Myers

Principal

Associate Principal*

Jonathan Reycraft

Gregory Luscombe ◊- 1

BASS TROMBONE

Gerard Pagano

TUBA

Michael Sanders

Principal

TIMPANI

Shannon Wood

Principal

Thomas Stubbs

Associate Principal

PERCUSSION

William James

Principal

John Kasica

Thomas Stubbs

Henry Claude ◊- 1

Zachary Crystal ◊- 1

Jacob Nissly ◊- 1

Alan Stewart ◊- 1

KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS

Principal*

Peter Henderson ◊- 1, 2

Nina Ferrigno ◊- 1, 2

MUSIC LIBRARY

Elsbeth Brugger

Librarian

Henry Skolnick

Assistant Librarian

Roberta Gardner

Library Assistant

STAGE STAFF

Bruce Mourning

Stage Manager

Joseph Clapper

Assistant Stage Manager

Brian Marten

Stage Technician

Jeffrey Stone

1 – City Noir

2 – Saxophone Concerto

† Solo, City Noir

* Chair vacant

** Replacement

◊ Extra musician

DAVID ROBERTSON

David Robertson has established himself as one of today’s most sought-after American conductors. A passionate

and compelling communicator with an extensive orchestral and operatic repertoire, he has forged close relationships

with major orchestras around the world through his exhilarating music-making and stimulating ideas. In 2014-15

Robertson will celebrate his 10th season as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony. In January 2014, while continu-

ing as St. Louis Symphony Music Director, Robertson assumed the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of

the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia.

ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY

Founded in 1880, the St. Louis Symphony is the second-oldest orchestra in the United States and is widely considered

one of the world’s finest. In September 2005, internationally acclaimed conductor David Robertson became the

12th Music Director and second American-born conductor in the orchestra’s history. In its 134th season, the St.

Louis Symphony continues to strive for artistic excellence, fiscal responsibility, and community connection. In addition

to its regular concert performances at Powell Hall, the Symphony is an integral part of the St. Louis community,

presenting free education and community programs throughout the region each year.

TIMOTHY McALLISTER

Timothy McAllister is one of today’s leading concert saxophone performers and a champion of contemporary music.

Credited with over 150 premieres of new works by eminent and emerging composers, his work is highlighted in the

recent Deutsche Grammophon DVD release of John Adams’ City Noir, filmed as part of Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural

concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In August 2013 he gave the world premiere of John

Adams’ Saxophone Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer in the Sydney

Opera House, followed by U.S. and international premieres with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Orquestra

Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo.

Nonesuch Records Inc., a Warner Music Group Company, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104.P & © 2014 Nonesuch Records Inc. for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States.Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution.

www.nonesuch.com www.earbox.com

Produced by Friedemann EngelbrechtRecording Engineer: Richard King

City Noir recorded February 15–16, 2013Saxophone Concerto recorded October 5–6, 2013Recorded at Powell Hall, St. Louis, MOAssistant Engineers: Paul Hennerich, Boris Golynskiy

Postproduction Facilities: Teldex Studio, Berlin Editing: Alexander FeuchtMixed and Mastered by Wolfgang Schiefermair

Design by John Heiden for SMOG DesignFront Cover Photograph: Man under a Streetlight (1945) by Weegee, courtesy of ICP/Getty ImagesBack Cover Photograph: Lovers at the Movies (1942) by Weegee, courtesy of ICP/Getty Images

For Nonesuch Records:Production Coordinator: Arthur MoorheadEditorial Coordinator: Robert Edridge-WaksProduction Supervisor: Karina Beznicki

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

City Noir was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in association with Cité de la Musique and ZaterdagMatinee.

City Noir and Saxophone Concerto are published by Hendon Music (Boosey & Hawkes)