Beginning on page 32 of the Aug. 25 New Yorker, John Adams recounts his
"formative years" in San Francisco and Berkeley, in a autobiographical
sketch that also provides the picture of a political/social/musical era
- including an unwelcome brush with history, see below.  Description of
his work at the SF Conservatory of Music and of the genesis of his early
operas is particularly interesting.

The article is *not* online, but an MP3
(http://downloads.newyorker.com/mp3/outloud/080825_outloud_adams.mp3)
interview with Adams is available, although the sound quality is poor.

   In April 1974, Adams was living in the Sunset District and
   set out to his bank to cash a $10 check, only to find that
   it was surrounded by police and paramedics. "The bank had
   just been hit by the Symbionese Liberation Army. ... Had I
   arrived a few minutes earlier, I might well have been staring
   straight down the barrel of **Tania**'s submachine gun."
   Adams describes this as having occurred at perhaps the peak
   of his own "radical phase."

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
[log in to unmask]

             ***********************************************
The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R)
list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability
Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery.  For more information,
go to:  http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html