Is it really possible that three of contemporary music’s most renegade, downtown-vibe composers have become its elder statesmen? During the 2016-17 season Philip Glass and Steve Reich each turned 80, and John Adams turned 70. Glass—who has resisted being pigeonholed as a “minimalist”—turned out another symphony, with Dennis Russell Davies leading the Bruckner Linz Orchestra’s world premiere of his Symphony No. 11 at Carnegie Hall on the composer’s birthday on January 31. Also at Carnegie Hall, an all-Reich birthday celebration in November featured his video opera Three Tales with Beryl Korot and the world premiere of Pulse, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and performed by the International Contemporary Ensemble conducted by David Robertson. Throughout the season, Reich has been curating Carnegie’s “Three Generations” series featuring composers of his generation and beyond, including Arvo Pärt, Michael Gordon, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner, and Terry Riley, among others. The San Francisco Symphony devoted a week to John Adams in September, and Adams was much in evidence throughout the season, curating a weekend at SFS’s SoundBox and conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a new staging of one of his best-known works, the opera Nixon in China. The St. Louis Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra were among the many orchestras presenting concerts of Adams’s compositions during his birthday month of February.
