London Symphony Orchestra Living Music Sunday 4 December 2016 7pm Barbican Hall JOHN ADAMS AT 70 John Adams El Niño Interval after Part One London’s Symphony Orchestra John Adams conductor Joélle Harvey soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano mezzo-soprano Davóne Tines bass-baritone Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, Nathan Medley counter-tenors London Symphony Chorus London Youth Choir Simon Halsey chorus director Concert finishes approx 9.30pm 2 Welcome 4 December 2016 Welcome Living Music Kathryn McDowell In Brief Welcome to tonight’s LSO concert where we are CHRISTMAS OFFERS FROM LSO LIVE delighted to be joined by one of America’s most influential musicians, John Adams, in the first of our Throughout December LSO Live will be running concerts celebrating his 70th birthday. This evening exclusive Christmas offers, including discounted he conducts El Niño, his own oratorio based on the box sets, special bundles and free UK shipping on nativity story, written for the new millennium. It is orders over £30. New offers will be announced on always a pleasure to work with John Adams on his 9 December, so keep checking the LSO Live website own music, and we are excited to be performing to take advantage of the latest discounts. this work for the first time here at the Barbican, before taking it on tour to Paris. lsolive.lso.co.uk On stage John Adams is joined by vocal soloists Joélle Harvey, Jennifer Johnson Cano, Davóne Tines, SOUND UNBOUND 2017: Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings and Nathan Medley, THE BARBICAN CLASSICAL WEEKENDER all of whom are making their LSO debuts this evening. Early-bird passes are now available for Sound Unbound In addition we would like to welcome back the 2017, the Barbican’s Classical Weekender, which takes London Symphony Chorus, which continues its 50th place on 29 and 30 April 2017. With 60 short sessions anniversary celebrations with the LSO’s own Choral featuring everything from symphony orchestras to solo Director Simon Halsey. The LSC will be joined on concerts, the festival showcases the infinite variety stage tonight by the London Youth Choir. of music, including film scores by John Williams performed by the LSO, cutting-edge new commissions, I hope you enjoy the concert and can join us again on some of the finest classical scores ever written, and 8 December when John Adams returns to conduct performances by world-class soloists. his own dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra, Scheherazade.2, with soloist Leila Josefowicz, barbican.org.uk/soundunbound alongside pieces by Bartók and Stravinsky. BRITISH COMPOSER AWARDS Eight alumni of the LSO’s composer schemes – Luke Bedford, Leo Chadburn, Joe Cutler, Tansy Kathryn McDowell CBE DL Davies, Emily Howard, Oliver Leith, Anna Meredith Managing Director and Richard Walley – have been nominated for British Composer Awards, along with Jonathan Dove for The Monster in the Maze, an LSO co-commission. The winners will be announced on 6 December. britishcomposerawards.com lso.co.uk John Adams 3 John Adams On El Niño and the LSO When I come to town to have a rehearsal there’s just this CLICK that happens. Watch the full interview with THE STORY BEHIND THE PIECE WORKING WITH THE LSO John Adams at youtube.com/lso I always wanted to write my own Messiah. I never sang I think my first hands-on experience with the LSO was in a chorus but I have heard amateur performances in the late 1980s and early 90s. I was invited to conduct, since I was a kid. I always loved Handel’s music but and since then have been here every two or three not only that, the story itself. I wasn’t someone who years and have done UK premieres of a lot of my studied the Bible, but I certainly knew the nativity pieces. I’ve toured with the LSO and just love them and Passion story. and they know my music so well. I was asked to celebrate the millennium, and When I come to town to have a rehearsal there’s the year 2000 seemed like an appropriate date to just this click that happens. It’s one of the few write a Messiah-type piece, and El Niño came into pleasures of getting older: you can see your music being. I went to my long-term friend, the director really get into the bloodstream of the performers Peter Sellars, and said, ‘Let’s put together a libretto so that they really understand it. about the roughness and the toughness and the difficulty of life’. 4 Programme Notes 4 December 2016 John Adams (b 1947) El Niño (1999–2000) PROGRAMME NOTE JOHN ADAMS CONDUCTOR other texts in, again, a modern setting. The as-yet & SYNOPSIS WRITER JOÉLLE HARVEY SOPRANO unfinished opera, Girls of the Golden West – set in KEITH POTTER is a Reader in Music JENNIFER JOHNSON CANO MEZZO-SOPRANO the mining camps of the Sierra Mountains during the at Goldsmiths, University of London, DAVÓNE TINES BASS-BARITONE California Gold Rush of the early 1850s – receives its and the author of Four Musical DANIEL BUBECK, BRIAN CUMMINGS, world premiere in San Francisco in November 2017. Minimalists: La Monte Young, Terry NATHAN MEDLEY COUNTER-TENORS Riley, Steve Reich, Philip Glass for LONDON SYMPHONY CHORUS ‘The libretto is a wonderful mix Cambridge University Press. LONDON YOUTH CHOIR of poetry, both period and SIMON HALSEY CHORUS DIRECTOR contemporary, up-to-date texts.’ THE LIBRETTO FOR EL NIÑO CONTAINS TEXTS IN ENGLISH, John Adams SPANISH AND LATIN. THE FULL PIECE WILL BE SURTITLED. ‘El Niño’ will be familiar as the hurricane wind that PETER SELLARS is an American Since the mid 1980s, the composer John Adams and often afflicts parts of the US in the winter. But it director who has staged numerous the director Peter Sellars have collaborated on seven literally means ‘the boy’ in Spanish, and this is the operas and plays with organisations large-scale works together, and they are currently clue to the work’s subject matter. Completed and across the world. In January, he working on an eighth. For some while they worked premiered in 2000, El Niño is a ‘Christmas Oratorio’, returns to the LSO to direct a with other librettists, and with the choreographer, but – inevitably, with Adams and Sellars – very much production of Ligeti’s Le grand Mark Morris; later on, they have taken to compiling an oratorio for our own millennium, written right on macabre with Sir Simon Rattle. librettos themselves from a wide range of already that millennium’s cusp. In this account of a nativity Find out more on page 16. extant texts. Several compositions – Nixon in China, play, a soprano and a mezzo variously represent the The Death of Klinghoffer, Doctor Atomic – are operas Virgin Mary and a modern mother faced with similar based on events sometimes still recent at the time predicaments. A bass-baritone appears chiefly as of the work’s conception; both in these operas and Joseph, but also as Herod and God. Three counter- in other works (including On the Transmigration of tenors also occupy central roles, functioning both Souls, composed in memory of the victims of 9/11), as a kind of Greek ‘chorus’ and, early on, as the Adams has been in great sympathy with Sellars’ Angel Gabriel. A real chorus is supplemented, concern to engage with important issues of our day. in the oratorio’s final scene, by a children’s chorus. Some works extend, in different ways, the The libretto for El Niño is taken from a variety of conventional frame surrounding what we might sources. These include pre-Christian prophets term ‘proper opera’. The curiously titled I Was (Isaiah, for instance), familiar words from the Gospels Looking at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky, for (including the Magnificat), unfamiliar extracts from instance, is a kind of rock musical. A Flowering writings not in the New Testament, the well-known Tree adapts a southern Indian folktale about love, early English verses ‘I Sing of a Maiden’, the responsibility and redemption to offer a 21st-century Wakefield Mystery Plays, Martin Luther and poetry response to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute. The by 20th-century female Hispanic writers. Texts are Gospel According to the Other Mary is ‘A Passion set in English, Spanish and Latin; occasionally, texts Oratorio’ based on a compilation of biblical and originally in Spanish are set in English translation. lso.co.uk Programme Notes 5 MORE CONTEMPORARY MUSIC IN 2016/17 The three women whose verse The premiere performances of El Niño engaged the was set by John Adams are: full paraphernalia of an opera house, with a film – set in a variety of modern desert, urban-interior JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ (1651–95), and industrial locations – and stylised movement a scholar, poet and nun from from everyone on stage, including a trio of dancers. Mexico who was condemned by Adams has always been clear, however, that this the authorities for her repeated ‘Christmas Oratorio’ is as valid a work for the concert lobbying for the right of women hall as for the operatic stage. The conclusion that to receive an education. its nativity narrative is to be interpreted as being as much about motherhood, poverty and even ecology GABRIELA MISTRAL (1889–1957), in our own time – as least as much as it remains, Thu 8 Dec 7.30pm the pen name of Chilean poet Lucila simultaneously, the story as told in the Bible – will JOHN ADAMS Scheherazade.2 Godoy y Alcayaga, the first Latin surely remain evident in tonight’s presentation. with Leila Josefowicz violin American author to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.