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John Adams: Air America
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John Adams is one of the most oft-performed and influential living American composers. of an open door which lets in the fresh air in great gusts." In the second report in Intersections, a Morning Edition series on artists and their sources of inspiration, NPR's Ketzel Levine talks with Adams about the music he's found in the written word.
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John Adams is one of America’s most admired and respected composers. A musician of enormous range and technical command, he has produced works, both operatic and symphonic, that stand out among all contemporary classical music for the depth of their expression, the brilliance of their sound world and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes.
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As a writer of English, John Adams in many respects surpassed all his American contemporaries; his style was crisp, pungent, and vivacious. In person he was of middle height, vigorous, florid, and somewhat corpulent, quite like the typical John Bull. He was always truthful and outspoken, often vehement and brusque. Vanity and loquacity, as he freely admitted, were his chief foibles. Without being quarrelsome, he had little or none of the tact that avoids quarrels; but he harbored no malice, and his anger, though violent, was short-lived. Among American public men there has been none more upright and honorable.
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Biography: Learned and thoughtful, John Adams was more remarkable as a political philosopher than as a politician. "People and nations are forged in the fires of adversity," he said, doubtless thinking of his own as well as the American experience.
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The late John Cage was an American composer who became well known for his inventive works. In 1952, he composed a work entitled 4'33, in which musicians sat on stage for 4 minutes, 33 seconds without playing a note. The composition wasn't fully appreciated at the time, but according to the journal Applied Psychophysiological Feedback, Cage must have written one of the most relaxing pieces in the history of music.
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