Music Director Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony release a new, live recording of John Adams’s Absolute Jest and Grand Pianola Music on the SFS Media Label on Friday, August 14, 2015. The album is now available.
Composed almost three decades apart, both works were written specifically for the San Francisco Symphony by Adams, who has collaborated with the orchestra for the past 35 years. On this album, MTT leads the orchestra in the first available recording of the SFS commissioned Absolute Jest, featuring the St. Lawrence String Quartet, and, in Grand Pianola Music, John Adams leads the orchestra, pianists Marc-André Hamelin and Orli Shaham, and the vocal group Synergy Vocals.