Grammy Award-Winning BMOP/sound Releases John Adams: Chamber Symphony Album

Composer: John Adams (b.1947)
Release Date: May 11, 2021
TRT: 66:35
Works: Chamber Symphony (1992), Common Tones in Simple Time (1979), Son of Chamber Symphony (2007)
Performers: Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by Gil Rose (conductor)    

Boston, MA (For Release 05.11.21) — Known as the nation’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music, Grammy Award-winning BMOP/sound today announced the release of John Adams: Chamber Symphony, comprising the composer’s first minimalist orchestral work sandwiched between two maximalist pieces for chamber ensemble. Featuring performances by the intrepid Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) led by conductor Gil Rose, the album gives listeners the opportunity to compare Adams’s two similarly fashioned chamber symphonies living at opposite ends of Adams’s stylistic tendencies.
John Adams: Chamber Symphony is bookended by Chamber Symphony (1992) and its successor, Son of Chamber Symphony (2007)—both showcasing the unique flexibility of a chamber ensemble that incorporates the timbral range and breadth of a full orchestra and the responsiveness and intimacy of chamber music. According to John Adams, a Pulitzer Prize winner and arguably the foremost living American composer, “a ‘chamber symphony’ is a piece of symphonic scale written for a large group of (often hectically overworked) soloists. As ensemble in live performance the ‘chamber symphony’ provides all sorts of challenges, not only to the performer, but also to the listener. Balances are always in danger of going seriously out of whack. Chamber music, with its inherently polyphonic and democratic sharing of roles, was always difficult for me to compose. There is no mistaking the attraction of this format…in which the weight and mass of a symphonic work could be married to the transparency and mobility of a chamber work.”

The album’s middle piece is Adams’s first orchestral work, written in 1979, which at that time ventured into uncharted minimalist terrain. Common Tones in Simple Time grew out of the pulse-based, process-oriented minimalism of Steve Reich and serves as one of the earliest examples of minimalism gently veering towards New Age. The composer Nico Muhly called this piece, “distinctly American music: the music of the cross-country road trip, the slowly changing landscape above the quickly moving pavement.” 

About BMOP/sound          
BMOP/sound, BMOP’s independent record label, was created in 2008 to provide a platform for BMOP’s extensive archive of music, as well as to provide widespread, top-quality, permanent access to both classics of the 20th century and the music of today’s most innovative composers. BMOP/sound has garnered praise from the national and international press. It is the recipient of a 2020 Grammy Award for Tobias Picker: Fantastic Mr. Fox as well as eight Grammy Award nominations, and its releases have appeared on the year-end “Best of” lists of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, National Public Radio, Time Out New York, American Record Guide, DownBeat, WBUR, NewMusicBox, and others. Admired, praised, and sought after by artists, presenters, critics, and audiophiles, BMOP and BMOP/sound are uniquely positioned to redefine the new music concert and recording experience. Launched in 2019, BMOP's digital radio station, BMOP/radio, streams BMOP/sound's entire catalog and airs special programming. BMOP.org

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