American Mavericks
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Adieu, Mavericks

With the American Mavericks Festival and Tour now complete, Davies Symphony Hall is quiet without percussion polyrhythms coming up through the floors, Paul Jacobs on the Ruffatti organ making us wonder if we just had a minor earthquake, and running into an array of props, sets, and weirdo instruments backstage.  Not to say we’re not […]

WATCH: American Mavericks Conversation with MTT, John Adams, Meredith Monk & Q2 Music from NYC’s Greene Space

Q2 Music celebrated America’s great iconoclastic composers when San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the SFS brought the American Mavericks tour to New York. In anticipation of their Carnegie Hall concerts March 27-30, composers John Adams and Meredith Monk, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and pianist Jeremy Denk joined MTT for an […]

LIVE webcast Monday, 3/26 with MTT, Meredith Monk, John Adams from WQXR’s Greene Space

On Monday, March 26 at 4 pm PDT/7pm EDT, Michael Tilson Thomas, John Adams, Meredith Monk, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and Jeremy Denk visit hosts David Garland of WQXR and Nadia Sirota of Q2 for a live studio event and webcast at New York’s  Greene Space  to launch the American Mavericks Festival in New York. […]

American Mavericks in Chicago

First stop on the SF Symphony’s American Mavericks tour: Chicago. It’s the first visit here by the orchestra in 10 years, and the city has put on its spring best: the day we arrived, it was one degree shy of Chicago’s record high temperature for March – 87 degrees. Millenium Park is in full bloom, […]

VIDEO: John Adams on Absolute Jest

Any composer has to reckon with the work of Ludwig van Beethoven. As John Adams put it: “Another rite of passage that one must endure, if you’re to be a ‘classical’ composer, is to share the bed with one of the large guys.” Adams’ new work, Absolute Jest, is inspired by Beethoven’s more intimate works. […]

WATCH: Live stream 3/17 1:30 pm PDT: “Talking About Creativity” from American Orchestra Forum

Join us Saturday, March 17 at 1:30pm PDT for a live webcast of the San Francisco Symphony’s “Talking About Creativity” event, part of our American Orchestra Forum. Hear San Francisco Symphony Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas, SF Symphony Executive Director Brent Assink, composers John Adams and Mason Bates, Margo Drakos of InstantEncore.com, Ed Sanders of […]

Absolute Jest

It’s not every day that you get to hear a sneak preview of a new piece of music by a great living American composer—unless you work at the SF Symphony during American Mavericks! Today, the St. Lawrence String Quartet is in the house, rehearsing the piece the Symphony commissioned from John Adams for the Mavericks […]