Adams' Apple-Cart (John Coolidge, that is!)

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I'm afraid to say that John Adams' best work is not even his own, but he did a splendid job orchestrating four songs from Debussy's Cinq poemes de Baudelaire even if it doesn't sound quite like what Debussy would've done himself.

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The latest episode of the Conversations With Tyler podcast is an 46 minute freewheeling chat with Adams:

John Adams on Composing and Creative Freedom

"Is classical music dying? For John Adams the answer is an emphatic no. Considered by Tyler to be America's greatest living composer, he may well be one of the people responsible for keeping it alive. John's contemporary classical music is some of the most regularly performed and he is well-known for his historically themed operas such as Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic, and most recently Antony and Cleopatra. He is also a conductor and author of, in Tyler's words, a "thoughtful and substantive" autobiography.

He joined Tyler to discuss why architects have it easier than opera composers, what drew him to the story of Antony and Cleopatra, why he prefers great popular music to the classical tradition, the "memory spaces" he uses to compose, the role of Christianity in his work, the anxiety of influence, the unusual life of Charles Ives, the relationship between the availability and appreciation of music, how contemporary music got a bad rap, his favorite Bob Dylan album, why he doesn't think San Francisco was crucial to his success, why he doesn't believe classical music is dead or even dying, his fascination with Oppenheimer, the problem with film composing, his letter to Leonard Bernstein, what he's doing next, and more."