CLASSICAL MUSIC REVIEW

Composer Adams, violinist bring electric performance

BY LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON

lajohnson@MiamiHerald.com

PETER ANDREW BOSCH / MIAMI HERALD STAFF

Composer John Adams leads the New World Symphony during the performance of his electric violin concerto The Dharma at Big Sur on Saturday at Lincoln Theatre in Miami Beach. Soloist Tracy Silverman is at left.

John Adams would likely recoil from the term ''crossover,'' a word that has become so diluted as to mean the most inoffensive common-denominator mélange.

But in many ways it's an apt description -- in the old, positive sense -- since the American composer's finest works seamlessly traverse the borders between classical, rock and world music. Likewise, Adams is one of the few living composers whose music attracts a wide, youthful-skewing demographic, as was made clear by the sold-out house at the Lincoln Theatre where Adams led the New World Symphony in his music Saturday night.

Adams is an engaging personality, supplying his own verbal notes with humor and easy eloquence.

His music is never far from the dance, as was made clear in his balletic podium presence, and Adams remains a terrific batonsmith, drawing performances that were incisive, rhythmically vital and scrupulously balanced even with the large orchestra going full blast.

The concert led off in exhilarating fashion with Slonimsky's Earbox. Inspired by the witty Russian musicologist Nicholas Slonimsky, this 1995 showpiece reflects Slonimsky's hyperkinetic personality, and captures Adams style in transition.

The 13-minute work is imbued with the motoric riffs of Adams' early minimalist works like Shaker Loops but the canvas is grander, with a richer harmonic palette and dizzying contrapuntal complexity. The musicians responded to Adams' charismatic direction with playing of whirlwind bravura, the coda built up to a glorious cacophony, with brass and percussion roaring.

Adams' electric violin concerto, The Dharma at Big Sur, was inspired by several elements: the title California vista, Jack Kerouac, and two significant West Coast composers, Lou Harrison and Terry Riley.

But the primary motivation was Tracy Silverman, the Juilliard-trained jazz violinist for whom the work was written. Silverman was the soloist Saturday with his six-stringed electric fiddle, and with Adams on the podium the performance kicked up a truly combustible collaboration.

The Harrison-inspired first movement conveys a kind of ecumenical world-music spirituality, moving from a hymn-like opening to Indian sitar and even Asian-flavored music. Silverman's hypnotic concentration and range of color in his extended solo phrases were remarkable, suggesting raga-like wails, febrile Mosque prayers, ancient chant, even the unearthly sound of a Chinese erhu.

The second movement proceeds from a sharply rhythmic riff, as the solo violin line becomes increasingly elaborate and the five-man percussion battery and orchestra ratchet up the volume and adrenaline. The inexorable crescendo to the final coda was thrilling, with Silverman, Adams and the orchestra striking sparks in a quite sensational performance.

The opera Doctor Atomic, based on the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, received largely positive reviews at its 2005 premiere, but Adams' inventive music seemed pushed into the background -- partly due to the necessity of the singers being heard and partly due to collaborator Peter Sellars' awkward libretto and staging.

The composer has refitted the opera's best music into an orchestral canvas and Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony is his most recent work. Sharply tightened from 45 minutes, the symphony now spans 27 minutes and boasts Adams' distinctive wit and energy. The abrupt pause between the opening section and the ''panic music'' seems to require a smoother transition, but otherwise this is another Adams winner, shot through with his insistent rhythmic punch and brilliant scoring.

The massive brass and percussion introduction, redolent of 1950s sci-fi films, was attacked with commanding force by the New World players.

The strings flew through the lightning passages of the ensuing panic music with virtuosity to spare, and trombonist Nicole Abissi richly characterized the pompous pretension of General Leslie Groves in her solos.

The opera's most lyrical moment and the symphony's climax comes with the conflicted Oppenheimer's aria Batter my heart, three person'd God, based on the scientist's favorite John Donne poem. Adams here gives the aria to a trumpet and Michael Sapienza lifted such a clarion, pure-toned and expressive solo, the human voice was never missed. The hard-charging music that returns to end the symphony made the requisite payoff in boisterous fashion with the New World excelling even by its high standards and capping one of the most memorable concerts of the year.

Adams clearly enjoys working with the New World and his presence always produces outstanding results. It would be wonderful to have Adams back as a more regular presence with the orchestra -- a boon not only for New World musicians but local audiences as well.