City Noir is a 2009 symphonic work by the composer John Adams. A primary inspiration for the piece is the work of historian Kevin Starr on urban California in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The composer characterizes the work as "jazz-inflected symphonic music", citing the French composer Darius Milhaud as originator of this trend. It has a duration of 35 minutes, features solos for alto saxophone, trumpet, trombone, horn, viola, and double bass, and has three movements: __NOTOC__
The piece was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the London Symphony Orchestra in association with Cité de la Musique, the Zaterdag Matinee and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.Barbican Music Event Detail , 2010. It received its first public performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic on October 8, 2009, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, with Carrie Dennis (viola), Timothy McAllister (alto saxophone), William Lane (horn), Donald Green (trumpet), and James Miller (trombone) playing the prominent solo parts.Adams, John. "City Noir" , 2010 This concert was filmed and subsequently televised internationally and released on DVD and digital download by Deutsche Grammophon.Swed, Mark. "Music review: L.A. Phil embraces a new generation with Dudamel", Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, October 9, 2009.
Critical reception
Anthony Tommasini, reviewing the world premiere, stated that "Mr. Adams has become a master at piling up materials in thick yet lucid layers. Moment to moment the music is riveting. Yet here as in some other Adams scores, I found it hard to discern the structural spans and architecture".Tommasini, Anthony. "Conductor Begins His Tenure With Force", The New York Times, New York, October 9, 2009.
Following its European premiere in March 2010, Richard Morrison praised the work as "infused with the seething energies, menace and melodrama of one particular cinematic genre — the film noir. The restlessness, the sardonic relish of urban angst familiar from the hard-bitten tales of Hammett and Chandler seeps through it like a dark stain".Morrison, Richard. "LSO/Adams at the Barbican", The Times, London, March 15, 2010. In regard to the same performance, Nick Kimberley wrote that the piece is "suffused with longing for a past in which big, bold gestures and firm-footed melody were the order of the day. And yet so affectionate is Adams’s manipulation of his musical memories that City Noir emerges as a dazzling showpiece. It may look resolutely backwards but it knows where it’s going".Kimberley, Nick. "John Adams's screen test triumph" , London Evening Standard, London, March 12, 2010.
In 2019, The Guardian ranked City Noir the 24th greatest work of art music since 2000, with Andrew Clements describing it as a "vivid portrait of Los Angeles [...] that references a host of American idioms without ever getting too specific. It’s not his finest orchestral work by any means (those came last century), but an effective, extrovert showpiece."
Instrumentation
The work is scored for the following instrumentation.
Woodwinds piccolo 3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo) 3 oboes English horn
bass clarinet alto saxophone 2 bassoons contrabassoon
Brass 6 horns 4 trumpets 3 trombones tuba Percussion timpani 5 percussionists jazz drum set
Keyboard piano celesta
Strings 2 harps
violins (1st and 2nd) violas cellos double basses
References
External links City Noir page from John Adams' official site