Adams's Earbox

I don't know why it surprised me to discover that composer John Adams, whose music we half-seriously tied to Beethoven last week at Orchestra Hall, is, in addition to being a terrific composer, a hilarious and entertaining writer, but it did. Adams has always been known as a dynamite interview, and he recently started his own blog, with the ominous title of Hell Mouth, on his personal web site.

So far, the posts seem to be a mix of self-promotion, serious rumination, and lighthearted side banter on the music world, which officially makes Adams one of the few classical types who really seems to get what blogging is good for. Consider this description of one of the various types of disruptive concertgoers that we've all encountered far too often...

"This person is just too scattered to be at a concert. She checks her Blackberry between movements, causing a pale fluorescent glow to emerge from beneath her seat. She adjusts her body sixty-seven times before finding a comfortable position. She’s put on way too much cologne—“Down South” it’s called, the one that comes in that phallic salad-dressing bottle and is guaranteed to cause anyone in the same zip code to double over in anaphylactic shock... You can’t really blame this person, but you wish she’d just take it outside into the lobby."

Heh. That's clearly prose written by a man who's spent some time listening to audiences audibly hating his latest world premiere. I don't have anything profound to say about Adams's blog - I just wanted to point out that it's there if you need it, and would definitely be added to the ItC blogroll, if we had a blogroll, which we don't. (Not sure why that is.) Oh, and also, the blog allows comments, so if you've ever wanted to ask the master of minimalism-plus a question or just enjoy talking back to composers, the opportunity awaits...