City Noir and Concerto

Noir is a peculiarly American affect. A sensory and emotional tonality, it has become a genre of its “The City and Its Double” is a title whimsically borrowed and tweaked from Artaud. I meant to own, in movies, novels, music, and even in clothing styles. Its roots lie in the dystopian mood of express the idea that the city on the surface is all activity and constant motion while its “double,” postwar urban America with its psychological uncertainties and unpredictable, often jagged shifts its darker self, is secretive, alternately sensual, ecstatic, brooding, and violent. between emotional highs and lows. The iconic black and white photographs of Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) with their harsh and pitiless representations of city life, its victims and hangers-on, its trashy After a “widescreen” explosive opening, the woodwinds, accompanied by a nervous jazz drum patter, glamour and its random violence, set the tone for noir even better than any particular Hollywood scurry hurriedly up and down a series of ever more precipitous scales in the manner of one of those screen evocation. But, even with the success of writers like Raymond Chandler, it was nonetheless frenetic bebop improvisations by the likes of Jackie McLean or Sonny Stitt. the movies that did the most to define noir as a readily definable constellation of stylistic tropes. The first of several virtuoso alto sax solos follows, with the instrument chattering and fluttering is a symphony that may also be experienced as the soundtrack to an imagined noir film. over the continually growing activity underneath. An emerging wall of brass takes over, the climax Since my childhood, I’d been both entranced and deeply frustrated by the music to these films – of which is relieved by a lush, lyrical melody that alternately soars and plunges in wide, entranced by their power to evoke instantaneously the mood of film; frustrated because no single expressive leaps. musical cue ever lasted for more than a minute or more. The movement progresses with the same sort of highly charged and unpredictable energy of a noir When I was asked to compose a piece for the and its newly appointed scene. Moments of repose last only long enough to be interrupted by another irruption of unsettling music director, , I decided that this piece should link to Los Angeles’ past. Hence the energy and threatened violence. “The City and Its Double” peaks with the appearance of a bounding idea arose to write an imagined ideal film-noir score that would be a fully formed symphonic structure. melody in the horns and celli, a motif that may have been subliminally suggested by my having been conducting Strauss’s Don Juan during the piece’s conception. City Noir is also an example of another American genre, jazz-inflected music. This is not the same as “symphonic jazz,” or what Gunther Schuller coined Third Stream. It is essentially In “The Song Is for You,” long, languid, sometimes bluesy melodies arise out of a haze of luminous symphonic music that incorporates some expressive inflections and harmonic techniques from sonorities, with rippling figurations in the harps, keyboards, and floating to the surface jazz practice without employing the improvisatory nature of its performance. (In that sense, the like smoke rings in a dark room. A long solo, at first slow and melancholy, gradually composer, in the course of the writing, did all the “improvisation.”) takes on movement and leads into a rude interruption, another orchestral “pile on,” with pounding drums and tattoos. But this is short lived, and the original lyric repose of the movement The Saxophone Concerto was composed in early 2013, the first work to follow the huge, three-hour reasserts itself with a quiet solo echoing the earlier blues-inflected melody. oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary. One would normally be hard put to draw lines between two such disparate creations. The first work deals with such matters as crucifixion, raising the “Boulevard Night” begins with a slow camera pan of a distant city skyline. A moody trumpet solo dead, and the trials of battered women. The other has as its source my life-long exposure to the great lingers over delicate shards of harmony. Several violent strokes interrupt this quiet reverie, and jazz saxophonists, from the swing era through the likes of Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, and Wayne Shorter. they launch a chugging, grinding pulse machine that alternately speeds up and slows down while Nonetheless there are peculiar affinities shared by both works, particularly in the use of modal scales the alto sax wails a cocky melody, an idée fixe that governs the rest of the movement. The music and the way they color the emotional atmosphere of the music. Both works are launched by a series becomes more and more brazen, like the snarky, heavily made-up faces in a David Lynch film. A of ascending scales that energetically bounce back and forth among various modal harmonies. wild and manic “scat” passage for sax and vibes rides over nervous percussion and stinging brass “bullets,” ushering in a final sequence of massed brass chords and a salsa-flavored beat that American audiences know the saxophone almost exclusively via its use in jazz, soul, and pop brings City Noir to an exuberant close. music. The instances of the saxophone in the classical repertory are rare, and the most famous appearances amount to only a handful of solos in works by Ravel (his Boléro and his orchestration *** of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition), by Prokofiev (Lieutenant Kijé Suite and Romeo and Juliet), Milhaud (La création du monde) and of course the “Jet Song” solo in Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story, probably one of the most immediately recognizable five-note mottos in all of music. Beyond that, the saxophone appears to be an instrument that classical employ at best occasionally and usually only for “special” effect. It is hard to believe that an instrument that originated in such straight-laced circumstances – it was designed in the mid nineteenth century principally for use in military bands in France and Belgium and was intended to be an extension of the brass family – should have ended up as the transformative vehicle for vernacular music (jazz, rock, blues, and funk) in the twentieth century. Nonetheless, its integration into the world of classical music has been a slow and begrudged one. Having grown up hearing the sound of the saxophone virtually every day – my father had played to Stravinsky, Bartók, and Ravel. Another album, Charlie Parker and Strings, from 1950, although alto in swing bands during the 1930s and our family record collection was well stocked with albums more conventional in format, nonetheless helped to set a scenario in my mind for the way the alto by the great jazz masters – I never considered the saxophone an alien instrument. My 1987 opera sax could float and soar above an orchestra. Another album that I’d known since I was a teenager, is almost immediately recognizable by its sax quartet, which gives the orchestration New Bottle Old Wine, with Canonball Adderley and that greatest of all jazz arrangers, Gil Evans, its special timbre. I followed Nixon with another work, Fearful Symmetries, that also features a sax remained in mind throughout the composing of the new concerto as a model to aspire to. quartet in an even more salient role. 2009’s City Noir featured a fiendishly difficult solo part for alto sax, a trope indebted to the wild and skittish styles of the great bebop and post-bop artists such as Classical saxophonists are normally taught a “French” style of producing a sound with a fast vibrato Charlie Parker, Lennie Tristano, and Eric Dolphy. Finding a sax soloist who could play in this style very much at odds with the looser, grittier style of a jazz player. Needless to say, my preference is but who was sufficiently trained to be able to sit in the middle of a modern symphony orchestra was for the latter “jazz” style playing, and in the discussions we had during the creation of the piece, a difficult assignment. But fortunately I met Tim McAllister, who is quite likely the reigning master I returned over and over to the idea of an “American” sound for Tim to use as his model. Such a of the classical saxophone, an artist who while rigorously trained is also aware of the jazz tradition. change is no small thing for a virtuoso schooled in an entirely different style of playing. It would be like asking a singer used to singing Bach cantatas to cover a Billie Holiday song. When one evening during a dinner conversation Tim mentioned that during high school he had been a champion stunt bicycle rider, I knew that I must compose a concerto for this fearless musician While the concerto is not meant to sound jazzy per se, its jazz influences lie only slightly below the and risk-taker. His exceptional musical personality had been the key ingredient in performances of surface. I make constant use of the instrument’s vaunted agility as well as its capacity for a lyrical City Noir, and I felt that I’d only begun to scratch the surface of his capacities with that work. utterance that is only a short step away from that of the human voice. The form is by now a familiar one for those who know my orchestral pieces, as I’ve used it in my , in City Noir, and A composer writing a violin or concerto can access a gigantic repository of past models for in my piano concerto . It begins with one long first part combining a fast movement reference, inspiration, or even cautionary models. But there are precious few worthy concertos for with a slow, lyrical one. This is followed by a shorter second part with its “fast, driving pulse.” saxophone, and the extant ones did not especially speak to me. But I knew many great recordings from the jazz past that could form a basis for my compositional thinking, among them Focus, a The concerto lasts roughly thirty-two minutes, making it an unusually expansive statement for an 1961 album by Stan Getz for tenor sax and an orchestra of harp and strings arranged by Eddie instrument that is still looking for its rightful place in the symphonic repertory. Sauter. Although clearly a “studio” creation, this album featured writing for the strings that referred —March 2014 ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY

David Robertson Music Director

FIRST SECOND VIOLINS Christian Woehr DOUBLE BASSES PICCOLO E-FLAT David Halen Alison Harney Assistant Principal Erik Harris Ann Choomack Diana Haskell Concertmaster Principal Gerald Fleminger Principal Linda Toote ◊- 1 Heidi Harris Kristin Ahlstrom Susan Gordon Carolyn White Associate Concertmaster Associate Principal Leonid Gotman Associate Principal James Meyer Celeste Golden Boyer Eva Kozma Morris Jacob Christopher Carson Peter Bowman Timothy Zavadil** Second Associate Concertmaster Assistant Principal Di Shi Assistant Principal Principal Erin Schreiber Rebecca Boyer Hall Shannon Farrell Williams David DeRiso Barbara Orland Assistant Concertmaster Nicolae Bica Eva Stern** Warren Goldberg Acting Co-Principal Timothy McAllister ◊- 1 Dana Edson Myers Deborah Bloom Chris Tantillo** Sarah Hogan Philip Ross Jessica Cheng Lisa Chong Donald Martin Acting Co-Principal Charlene Clark Elizabeth Dziekonski Ronald Moberly Cally Banham Andrew Cuneo Ann Fink Lorraine Glass-Harris Daniel Lee Michelle Duskey** Principal Emily Ho Ling Ling Guan Principal HARP Andrew Gott Silvian Iticovici Jooyeon Kong Melissa Brooks Allegra Lilly ENGLISH HORN Associate Principal Second Associate Concertmaster Asako Kuboki Associate Principal Principal Cally Banham Felicia Foland Emeritus Wendy Plank Rosen Catherine Lehr Frances Tietov ◊- 1 Andrew Thompson Helen Kim Shawn Weil Assistant Principal Megan Stout ◊- 1 Joo Kim Cecilia Belcher** Anne Fagerburg Scott Andrews Xiaoxiao Qiang James Czyzewski Principal Andrew Thompson Manuel Ramos David Kim Mark Sparks Diana Haskell Angie Smart Beth Guterman Chu Alvin McCall Principal Associate Principal HORNS Hiroko Yoshida Principal Bjorn Ranheim Andrea Kaplan Tina Ward Roger Kaza Ellen dePasquale** Kathleen Mattis Elizabeth Chung** Associate Principal James Meyer Principal Melody Lee** Associate Principal Davin Rubicz** Jennifer Nitchman Timothy Zavadil** Thomas Jöstlein Ann Choomack Associate Principal James Wehrman MUSIC LIBRARY DAVID ROBERTSON Tod Bowermaster Michael Sanders Elsbeth Brugger David Robertson has established himself as one of today’s most sought-after American conductors. A passionate Lawrence Strieby Principal Librarian and compelling communicator with an extensive orchestral and operatic repertoire, he has forged close relationships Julia Erdmann** Henry Skolnick with major around the world through his exhilarating music-making and stimulating ideas. In 2014-15 Anna Spina** Assistant Librarian Robertson will celebrate his 10th season as Music Director of the St. Louis Symphony. In January 2014, while continu- Tricia Jöstlein - 1 Shannon Wood Roberta Gardner ◊ ing as St. Louis Symphony Music Director, Robertson assumed the post of Chief Conductor and Artistic Director of Principal Library Assistant the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in Australia. Thomas Stubbs Karin Bliznik Associate Principal STAGE STAFF ST. LOUIS SYMPHONY Principal Bruce Mourning † Thomas Drake PERCUSSION Stage Manager Founded in 1880, the St. Louis Symphony is the second-oldest orchestra in the United States and is widely considered Associate Principal William James Joseph Clapper one of the world’s finest. In September 2005, internationally acclaimed conductor David Robertson became the Michael Walk Principal Assistant Stage Manager 12th Music Director and second American-born conductor in the orchestra’s history. In its 134th season, the St. Caroline Schafer** John Kasica Brian Marten Louis Symphony continues to strive for artistic excellence, fiscal responsibility, and community connection. In addition Kevin Cobb** Thomas Stubbs Stage Technician to its regular concert performances at Powell Hall, the Symphony is an integral part of the St. Louis community, presenting free education and community programs throughout the region each year. Mark Hyams ◊- 1 Henry Claude ◊- 1 Jeffrey Stone Zachary Crystal ◊- 1 TIMOTHY McALLISTER Jacob Nissly ◊- 1 1 – City Noir † Timothy Myers Alan Stewart ◊- 1 2 – Saxophone Concerto Timothy McAllister is one of today’s leading concert saxophone performers and a champion of contemporary music. Principal Credited with over 150 premieres of new works by eminent and emerging composers, his work is highlighted in the Associate Principal* KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS † Solo , City Noir recent Deutsche Grammophon DVD release of John Adams’ City Noir, filmed as part of Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural Jonathan Reycraft Principal* * Chair vacant concert as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In August 2013 he gave the world premiere of John Gregory Luscombe ◊- 1 Peter Henderson ◊- 1, 2 ** Replacement Adams’ Saxophone Concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the baton of the composer in the Sydney Nina Ferrigno ◊- 1, 2 ◊ Extra musician Opera House, followed by U.S. and international premieres with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Orquestra BASS TROMBONE Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo. Gerard Pagano Produced by Friedemann Engelbrecht Recording Engineer: Richard King

City Noir recorded February 15–16, 2013 Saxophone Concerto recorded October 5–6, 2013 Recorded at Powell Hall, St. Louis, MO Assistant Engineers: Paul Hennerich, Boris Golynskiy

Postproduction Facilities: Teldex Studio, Berlin Editing: Alexander Feucht Mixed and Mastered by Wolfgang Schiefermair

Design by John Heiden for SMOG Design Front Cover Photograph: Man under a Streetlight (1945) by Weegee, courtesy of ICP/Getty Images Back Cover Photograph: Lovers at the Movies (1942) by Weegee, courtesy of ICP/Getty Images

For Nonesuch Records: Production Coordinator: Arthur Moorhead Editorial Coordinator: Robert Edridge-Waks Production Supervisor: Karina Beznicki

Executive Producer: Robert Hurwitz

City Noir was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in association with Cité de la Musique and ZaterdagMatinee. Nonesuch Records Inc., a Warner Music Group Company, 1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104. P & © 2014 Nonesuch Records Inc. for the United States and WEA International Inc. for the world outside of the United States. Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution. City Noir and Saxophone Concerto are published by Hendon Music (Boosey & Hawkes) www.nonesuch.com www.earbox.com