A Flowering Moment

The evening of Friday, May 15, 2009, was a most auspicious point of felicity. In one of the final performances of the 2008/2009 Los Angeles Philharmonic concert season, I heard a resplendent work performed under the baton of the composer himself, John Adams, who, it so happens, is now the philharmonic’s new creative chair, which not only enriches the artistic potential of the orchestra, but might also bless future concerts with Adams’ music, attendance, direction, or perhaps all three.

The program consisted of A Flowering Tree, one of Adams’ most recent operas, based on an extremely old South Indian folk tale of a beautiful young peasant woman named Kumudha, who discovers herself endowed with the magical ability to transform herself into a tree, the flowers of which are sold by her sisters to support their impoverished family. A love burgeons between Kumudha and a rather selfish young prince, who happens to witness the transformation. The prince’s father eventually consents to their union, and on their wedding night, Kumudha discovers the prince quite obsessed, having almost “fetishized” her ability. After a cruel incident plotted by the prince’s sister, who also discovers the ability, Kumudha is left in a grotesque state of mid-transformation and subsequently disappears in horror, leaving the prince in shame and despondence at having driven her away. Kumudha is later discovered by the queen of a neighboring city—another of the prince’s sisters, as it turns out—and is brought to her residence in an attempt to raise her brother’s spirits. Upon being reunited, Kumudha and the prince recognize each other at once, and the prince uses two pitchers of water to return the young woman to her human form.

The opera was commissioned for the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, for which the festival director and longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellers had invited a variety of artists to respond to the late work of Mozart in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth. Adams used The Magic Flute as his thematic impetus for A Flowering Tree. Both works use fantastical narratives to explore universal human archetypes, and both occur in far-off locales seen as somewhat exotic to Western minds. The premiere of Adams’ work, however, demonstrated an unprecedented cultural alloy—an opera on an Indian folk tale in both English and Spanish premiered by the Joven Camerata di Venezuela, performed by Indonesian dancers from Java, sung by the Schola Cantorum Caracas chorus, and written by a composer from California. Peter Sellers, who co-wrote the libretto with Adams and is responsible for the stage direction, remarked at Upbeat Live before the performance that opera may be the art form of the 21st century, simply because it begs the question, how many people can we fit in the room? Unlike the multiculturalism that characterized the 90s, in which it was common for people to share their culture with one another, in our present era, we find that people actively participate in each other’s cultures, and opera involves a unique degree of artistic collaboration that reflects this. A Flowering Tree, then, shows how such an aesthetic can yield a result at once grounded in tradition and, at the same time, fresh and original.

The music of John Adams has captivated my spirit and mind ever since my dad first played the final movement of the pseudo-symphony Harmonielehre on the stereo in my parents’ living room some 15 years ago. Adams’ music has a relentless ethereal quality, as of dreamscapes continually unfolding. And though he has used the language of minimalism as rhythmic subtext for much of his work, it is far more organic than pure minimalism, a la Philip Glass, Steve Reich, et al. Harmonielehre was my first significant exposure to a minimalist aesthetic, however peripheral, and my first moment of intense adoration for Adams’ art. The final movement is a thing of ebullient sublimity. I remember my dad describing the first few minutes as so euphorically beautiful, it reminded him of the soul’s wonder at entering paradise. He used this analogy, I remember, in reference to four different works, of which the other three were the Verdi Requiem, Death and Transfiguration by Strauss, and the Second Symphony of Sibelius. As with so much of Adams’ music, however, the movement doesn’t remain long at this point of transcendent beauty, but is gradually transformed into what my father described as a “wall of sound,” pounding, shining, and spiraling its way up to an expansive tumult and a final plume of blazing brass. This is music at once introspective and majestic, music that reaches deep into the heart and stokes the fires of the imagination with harmonies and instrumentation of a singular, otherworldly nature. Few words can describe the awe with which I approached this piece. And so began my odyssey with the music of this remarkably gifted composer.

My first experience seeing Adams in the flesh followed a performance of Harmonielehre at the Barbican Centre in London. I attended the performance with my parents, and none of us expected him to actually be there. So it was a real treat to see him take the stage to be recognized during the applause. I saw him again six years later, the afternoon of January 21, 2007, at an L.A. Philharmonic performance of one of his more recent symphonic opuses titled Naïve and Sentimental Music, which had been commissioned by the philharmonic. Esa-Pekka Salonen led the orchestra in a splendid performance of the piece following Beethoven’s Second Symphony. I have to say, as wonderful as Beethoven is, Naïve and Sentimental Music was exhilarating beyond measure. Adams ascended the stage just prior to the performance and offered a few words about how it came to be and what it means to him. It’s tremendous when composers and performers enrich the concert experience in this way. He said the piece was meant to evoke a journey of gradually-shifting musical vistas. The second movement, for example, he described as a desert landscape in which more massive forms, such as mountains and canyons, gradually take shape. The steel-string guitar in that movement, gently weaving through the string accompaniment, was particularly beautiful. The third movement was a rhythmic riot, full of thrilling pulsations and a transcendent, explosive conclusion, after which I was so moved, I started clapping and thought I would never stop. The Upbeat Live that preceded this performance was conducted by a music professor who shared some interesting insights. Apparently, Adams himself had found it meaningful to think of the haunting, plaintive melody that opens the first movement as the protagonist of a Dickens novel, who wanders into the story and, through a series of developments, pursues his destiny—an altogether satisfying analogy given the deep affection for David Copperfield I’ve been harboring these past few years. What an experience! I remember leaving the auditorium that night thinking, thank God there is such music to quench and renew a thirsting heart.

The evening on which the opera was performed, this sentiment was crowned with a new and richer experience. The score of A Flowering Tree is intensely luminous, and the performance was magnificent. Adams himself conducted the philharmonic, a handful of soloists and dancers, as well as the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Furthermore, my mom and I had discovered at a performance the previous week that Adams would be on hand in the Grand Avenue lobby afterward to sign copies of his CDs and his newly-released memoir. Needless to say, I was aquiver with anticipation. And after the shimmering glory of Kumudha’s final transformation and the transfigured embrace of husband and wife supported by the irrepressibly sonorous fire of the orchestra had brought the opera to a gorgeous, arresting conclusion, we clapped fervently for what seemed like an eternity, then headed downstairs and ended up only third or fourth in line in the lobby. It was astounding. Not only had I sat less than twenty feet from Adams before the performance while he shared thoughts and details about the opera and his craft, I even got to meet the man and shake his hand, a moment of transcendent delight, to be sure. I told him how greatly I enjoyed his work, and he asked me if I played an instrument. I shared that I was a percussionist, to which he smiled and simply replied, “Well, we need you.” It was a rather ordinary and pleasant little conversation, reminding me of course that he was simply a person like anyone else. Mom and I shared how much we had enjoyed the performance of Harmonielehre at the Barbican Centre some years before. He seemed so appreciative, so benevolent, and even allowed us a quick photo before we left. However extraordinary, Adams is simply a man. And yet, I'm doubtful as to whether residents of the 19th or 20th centuries felt any less a spirit of adulation in the presence of greatness having met and shaken hands with Beethoven or Stravinsky, and this was certainly a moment of equivalent quintessence.

I cannot convey my excitement about attending the upcoming November 29 concert at which the philharmonic's new music director Gustavo Dudamel will conduct Adams' latest work, City Noir, a piece commissioned by the philharmonic for the new season and also as part of a celebration of California music titled "West Coast, Left Coast," which is being curated by Adams. But rather than speculate or paraphrase on what might await the audience and myself at this momentous offering, I should like to defer to the man himself. This is a video I took of Adams during Upbeat Live, just before the May 15 performance of A Flowering Tree, in which he elaborates on being commissioned and the dark side of L.A. that drove the aesthetic of City Noir.


My father once remarked, after we had finished listening to Adams’ Violin Concerto one evening, that he believed John Adams could turn out to be the greatest composer of his generation. Truly, I find nothing in the present life of modern music to contradict this notion. Here’s to you, Dad.