- Adams’ The Dharma at Big Sur was composed in 2003 for the opening of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. The work is written for solo electric violin and orchestra.
- Adams originally intended to include a narrator as part of the performance who would recite words from Jack Kerouac’s novel, Big Sur. However, the composer ultimately decided that the music spoke for itself.1
- Quotes from Adams’ own program notes on the piece:
“When I was asked… to compose a special piece for the opening, I immediately began searching my mind for an image, either verbal or pictorial, that could summon up the feelings of being an emigrant to the Pacific Coast—as I am, and as are so many who’ve made the journey here, both physically and spiritually.”
“Coming upon the California coast is a different experience altogether. Rather than gently yielding ground to the water, the Western shelf drops off violently, often from dizzying heights, as it does at Big Sur, the stretch of coastal precipice midway between Santa Cruz and Santa Barbara. Here the current pounds and smashes the littoral in a slow, lazy rhythm of terrifying power. For a newcomer, the first exposure produces a visceral effect of great emotional complexity.”
“The Dharma at Big Sur is in two parts, each dedicated to a West Coast composer who had been both a friend and an inspiration to me, Lou Harrison and Terry Riley. The first part, ‘A New Day’, is a long rhapsodic reverie for the solo violin, an ‘endless melody’ that soars above the stillness of an orchestral drone with its quietly pulsating gongs and harps and distant brass chords.
“After a delicately cacophonous shower of tintinnabulations from the harps, piano, samplers, and tuned cowbells, the tempo takes on a defined pulse, not unlike the jod, or medium tempo, section of a classical raga. The solo violin juggles a jazz-infused melody that gradually expands in scope and tessitura. This is ‘Sri Moonshine’, a tip of the hat to Terry Riley, not only the composer of In C and A Rainbow in Curved Air but also a master of Indian raga singing.”
Source
Sources
- Deanna Hudgins, “The Dharma at Big Sur,” L. A. Phil, accessed October 21, 2024, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/4119/the-dharma-at-big-sur.
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