One of the most prominent names of North American music of today

John Adams. Age: 57 years. Profession: composer. One of the most prominent names of North American music of today. Europe discovers really in 1991, when his second Opera, The Death of Klinghoffer, the first world took place on 19 March, in the theatre of the currency in Brussels, is repeated less than a month later by the Opera de Lyon, co-producer, in the directed by Peter Sellars.

At the risk of shock the war of the Gulf is rage , the topic is hot. October 7, 1985, while it crosses the waters of Alexandria, the Italian liner "Achille lauro" is the victim of a hostage. A commando of four men from the Front for the liberation of Palestine threatened 450 passengers and calling for the release of 50 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Jewish, disabled American tourist, Leon Klinghoffer, is killed; his body thrown into the sea.

A poignant film

The time is more sombre satire, with verve, humor which were the salt of the first opera of Adams "nixon in China" created in Houston in 1987. Those who expect a rich adventures thriller are their costs: as one of "nixon in China", his book is due to Alice Goodman. From the reconstruction, it extends the drama into a poetic fabric which, by successive layers and involving the protagonists, subjectively dates back to the Bible. "The death of Klinghoffer", book dark and pondered, resembles an oratorio and openly claims the Passions of Johann Sebastian Bach and Greek tragedy. As the two choirs of entry pages the exiled Palestinians, the Jews exiled , the song of the night of Mamoud and bassoon which accompanies it, the immersion of the body of the deceased, on a solo oboe, are strong pages whose emotion immediately affects the listener.

Winner of the prize Italia, poignant film of Penny Woolcock escapes Theatre mapping and can afford, archival footage helping, to convey to the realism without so singer a subject of CNN. Its broadcast on Arte will allow to become aware of the talent of John Adams and his importance in the musical life of decades In the land of Descartes, which are like labels, it is initially located in the ranks of the minimalist and repetitive, in the footsteps of Terry Riley, La Monte Young, Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Their compositions are based on a material of an extreme simplicity and use without limitation of the principle of repetition.

If he considers the fundamental movement for the evolution of American music, Adams also perceived weaknesses. His first works inspired, however, such "Shaker Loops", composed in 1978 for Septet stringed, expanded, seven years later for Orchestra the best introduction to the art of the musician, who presents in its two faces, the dynamic virtuoso, but also the elegiac poet. Very known, also "The Chairman Dances", "FoxTrot for Orchestra", 1985, emanation of "Nixon in China", are animated in the same dynamic verve, exhaustion. The year of the creation of "klinghoffer", 1991, is also the writing of "el dorado", fresco in two parts where the orchestrator of the author donations luminaries.

In France, John Adams is the first victim of a misunderstanding: in pincer between, on the one hand, those who brandish as an emblem of modernity in opposition to Pierre Boulez and a vanguard which the aesthetics of serialism, is regarded as elitist and outdated, and the other, those who consider obsolete the use of tone, that Adams was still practised. Free and each other, it must be appreciated at its fair value and in this regard the monograph of Renaud Machart, just published, can play a fundamental role, as it is in these books in which passion and reason balance to love an artist.