Chairman Dances

[MikeMason]

Why hasn't this ever been mentioned?There is a serious solo in the middle of this thing.Certainly tougher than some stuff on the standard audition list.Metronome time

[windshieldbug]

We were doing this work, and during rehearsal of something else I asked Mr. Adams (who was present to receive an award) why it was he wrote great tuba licks (thinking he must know a good tubist).

He looked at me, and just said, "I don't know. I never thought of it that way; that's just how I hear them... "

Great part, isn't it!?

[eupher61]

I'm not at all familiar with this piece. Who Adams wrote it? Any recordings? When was it written?

[windshieldbug]

John Adams

1985

BTW, my suspicion why you don't find it on more auditions is that it's copyrighted and has an active composer.

"John Adams on The Chairman Dances:

The Chairman Dances was an "out-take" of Act III of Nixon in China. Neither an "excerpt" nor a "fantasy on themes from," it was in fact a kind of warmup for embarking on the creation of the full opera. At the time, 1985, I was obliged to fulfill a long-delayed commission for the Milwaukee Symphony, but having already seen the scenario to Act III of Nixon in China, I couldn’t wait to begin work on that piece. So The Chairman Dances began as a "foxtrot" for Chairman Mao and his bride, Chiang Ch’ing, the fabled "Madame Mao," firebrand, revolutionary executioner, architect of China’s calamitous Cultural Revolution, and (a fact not universally realized) a former Shanghai movie actress. In the surreal final scene of the opera, she interrupts the tired formalities of a state banquet, disrupts the slow moving protocol and invites the Chairman, who is present only as a gigantic forty-foot portrait on the wall, to "come down, old man, and dance." The music takes full cognizance of her past as a movie actress. Themes, sometimes slinky and sentimental, at other times bravura and bounding, ride above in bustling fabric of energized motives. Some of these themes make a dreamy reappearance in Act III of the actual opera, en revenant, as both the Nixons and Maos reminisce over their distant pasts."

[Art Hovey]

Wasn't there a story that went around a few years ago about Madame Mao disliking the sound of a tuba and having all the tuba players in Chinese orchestras fired? How neat is it that Mr. Adams saw fit to put in some good tuba licks?

[Jess Lightner]

You must (!!!) have the recording of San Fransisco playing this on a great all Adams disc... Floyd (I assume it's him) sounds great.

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[Chuck Jackson]

Wasn't there a story that went around a few years ago about Madame Mao disliking the sound of a tuba and having all the tuba players in Chinese orchestras fired? How neat is it that Mr. Adams saw fit to put in some good tuba licks?

The story is chronicled in the piece called "The Tales of the Cultural Revolution". If memory serves me correctly, it is a tuba piece concerning the very same story. I am sure someone with more solo smarts than me can give us the right info on the work.

Chuck

[windshieldbug]

Also explained in Excerpts from Mao Yu Run. "Music Under Mao, its Background and Aftermath." Asian Music, 22, 2, pp.97-125, 1991.

"These were the only songs we heard and sang during the ten-year Cultural Revolution. Mao was clearly aware that his one book and the few "revolutionary" songs could not constitute the whole gamut of proletarian literature and art. Ambitious and undaunted, he set out single-handedly with his last wife Jiang Qing to build up the "unprecedented proletarians culture. The outcome was the so-called "eight model plays." The term "model" was used because anyone daring to venture to tackle the task of creating literature had to use these plays as models. The eight model plays consisted of five Beijing Operas, one ballet, one concerto, and one work of a new sort, called Excerpts from 'The Story of Red Lantern,' Accompanied by the Piano. To make these plays seem more pompous and grandiose, the five Beijing Operas used the symphony orchestra as accompaniment instead of the usual ensemble of chin hu, er hu, pipa, cymbals, and drums. Jiang Qing used the symphony orchestra under the pretext that the instruments were "classless," but she nevertheless kicked out the tuba, the trombones, and the bassoons because they were considered the "bad elements" in the society of orchestra instruments."