John Adams: Opera Choruses, Volume 2

Description

Nixon in China • Doctor Atomic • A Flowering Tree

Boosey & Hawkes is pleased to present a three-volume collection of John Adams's choruses from his world-renowned operas, edited by conductor Grant Gershon, featuring choral selections from six iconic stage works with newly arranged piano accompaniment by Chitose Okashiro.

Adams's stage works are repertory staples at opera houses across the world, celebrated for their exceptional craft, emotional resonance, and urgently relevant subject matter. The LA Times described the role of Adams's choruses in his operas as a powerful narrative and emotional driver: “They are the weather. They are memories. They are dreams. They are fears. They are history. They are the governors of emotion.”

Volume 2 features choral selections from three of Adams's most celebrated operas: Nixon in China, a dramatic imagining of President Nixon's epochal 1972 trip to China, Doctor Atomic, which visits physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer in the days before the testing of the atomic bomb, and A Flowering Tree, an adaptation of South Indian folktale about a beautiful girl who transforms into a tree. Selections include the hypnotic opening of Nixon in China leading into the chorus “Soldiers of Heaven,” the darkly dramatic “At the Sight of This” from Doctor Atomic, and the brilliant “Flores” from A Flowering Tree.