I've never been to Disneyland (honest!) but I've now been to the new Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA, and it really is something; it's all it's been hyped to be, inside and out.I had the transformative pleasure a week ago to sit in the hall and hear the LA Master Chorale under Grant Gershon sing my "Savage Altars." Hearing it sung by a fairly large choir was a revelation as I designed it for a chamber choir and thought it might lose clarity and focus in a bigger choral setting. But Grant's choir sings like a chamber choir, spot on you might say. It was magic.
And then, mirabile dictu, a week later I was back in the magic kingdom and heard just about the best performance ever of "Fog Tropes" under--guess who?-- the guy who made me do it, John C. Adams!
John's concert, part of the LA Phil's Green Umbrella series, had Harry Partch, Frank Zappa and me--still living! The sell out audience went wild for the Zappa stuff, and actually gave me a pretty good hand as well.
The frosting on the cake was "Alcatraz" being shown on monitors in various spaces iall over the building; you might say it permeated the atmosphere during the several weeks of this "West Coast/Left Coast" Festival. Actually, you could barely hear the music on most of the monitors, but Bengston's pictures looked pretty good. Maybe people will buy the CD in the gift shop in order to hear the music properly!
Actually, Alactraz has just been reissued for New Albion Records and has a newly printed booklet with photos of much better quality than the old booklet.
(PS I have a new CD coming out in less than a week--stay tuned)
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