John Adams's "City Noir" Album Features "Superb" Performances, Says St. Louis Post-Dispatch

New York, NY (Top40 Charts) John Adams's new album, City Noir, released this past spring on Nonesuch Records, comprises the title track from 2009 and the debut recording of his 2012 Saxophone Concerto. Both are performed on the album by the St. Louis Symphony led by David Robertson, featuring saxophonist Timothy McAllister, recorded in concert at the orchestra's home base, Powell Hall in St. Louis.

Robertson and the orchestra were previously featured on the 2009 Nonesuch release of Adams's Doctor Atomic Symphony, and now, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller in her review of the new album, McAllister, a "first-class soloist," is added to the mix, and "the performances are all superb" on the title piece.

The piece "begins with hyperkinetic power, making full use of an enormous percussion section, shifting to ominous quiet and melancholy passages for McAllister's soulful alto sax," writes Miller. She goes on to say of the Saxophone Concerto that McAllister's "performance, well-supported by Robertson, is amazing."

Miller concludes that "both pieces get terrific performances; the recording itself got top-notch engineering from Friedemann Engelbrecht."

Timothy McAllister joins the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra and Music Director Marin Alsop for the West Coast Premiere of Adams's Saxophone Concerto at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium this Saturday, August 9. The performance is part of the Cabrillo Music Festival, of which John Adams is a composer in residence. For tickets, visit cabrillomusic.org. Read more about Adams's connection to the festival in a feature article in the San Jose Mercury News at mercurynews.com.