“Seattle Symphony audiences have another reason to be proud of their band,” writes Thomas May in last Monday’s (12/27) Seattle Times. “The composer and conductor John Adams returns Jan. 6 and 8 to lead … a program devoted to his music…. This engagement marks his fourth round with Seattle Symphony since making his podium debut here in 2004…. That Adams has for some time ranked among the most performed of living composers doesn’t mean his music is easy to play. Far from it…. This is all the more the case in a program [starts] with the brief, bracing ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine.’ … His Seattle Symphony program includes … ‘City Noir’ … a symphonic meditation on what he calls ‘the dark, eerie chiaroscuro’ of Hollywood noir films and the anxious energy of postwar Los Angeles…. Written for Gustavo Dudamel’s inaugural season with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2009, ‘City Noir’ features a prominent part for alto saxophone (Timothy McAllister will be the soloist)… In ‘Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes?,’ his third piano concerto … the score includes instructions like ‘twitchy, botlike.’ … Pianist Jeremy Denk … will appear as the soloist in ‘Devil.’ ”
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