American Grace
Label: Canary Classics [CC11]
Released: February 25, 2014
"This is a performance that gives me great joy to listen to. You have here twenty astonishing agile fingers working in perfect sync throughout the piece." — John Adams
Orli Shaham, piano ; Jon Kimura Parker, piano
David Robertson, conductor
Los Angeles Philharmonic
American Grace features John Adams' Hallelujah Junction as well as the world premiere recording of Steven Mackey's piano concerto Stumble to Grace recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Orli Shaham's husband conductor David Robertson at the helm.American Grace features John Adams' Hallelujah Junction as well as the world premiere recording of Steven Mackey's piano concerto Stumble to Grace recorded with the Los Angeles Philharmonic with Orli Shaham's husband conductor David Robertson at the helm.
Stumble to Grace is a real tour de force for Shaham, who manages to make it all seem deceptively simple.
St. Louis Post-DispatchJohn Adams (b.1947)
Hallelujah Junction
Orli Shaham and Jon Kimura Parker, pianos
China Gates
Orli Shaham, piano
Steven Mackey (b.1956)
Stumble to Grace*
Orli Shaham, piano
David Robertson, conductor
LA Phil
Sneaky March*
Orli Shaham, piano
* World première recordings
"The CD opens with Hallelujah Junction (1996), a two-piano piece by Adams performed by Shaham with Jon Kimura Parker. It is the most unassailably great work on the album, sharing the dynamism of Stumble to Grace with its vibrant rhythms and brilliantly interlocking chords. Parker and Shaham provide striking contrasts in articulation, moving from buoyant to smooth to jabbing. They also display impressive communication in navigating the complex and antagonistic network of rhythms. It ends in a vigorous display of obstinacy where both pianists attempt to go in different directions and refuse to acquiesce to the other’s wishes. After a harmonically crazed argument, they finally come to a grudging understanding for the last few chords. Stubbornness and exuberance are an essential combination in commissioning and performing new works, and Shaham nails it this CD." — Cleveland Classical (original link)
"John Adams's Hallelujah Junction, for two pianos, peals invitingly in its intricate opening, and from there over three movements and 16 minutes the listener is beguiled by pleasing harmonies, rhythms and exchanges while wondering about substance and direction; clever and appealing, though, with Orli Shaham and Jon Kimura Parker revelling in the interplay." — classical ear
"The music has exemplary qualities and the performances shine. Ms. Shaham has arrived with a bang-up flourish. This is music not to miss!" — Capplegate Classical - Modern Music Review (original link)
"Shaham has innocent fun with Mackey's Sneaky March, brings an etheral beauty to John Adams's China Gates, and, with Jon Kimura Parker, intrepidly investigates the intersections of angularity and romanticism in Adams's Hallelujah Junction..." — Gramophone
"…she [Orli] superbly performs a couple more familiar works, “Hallelujah Junction” and “China Gate,” that exemplify why John Adams is among the most popular of living composers for both musicians and audiences." — The Buffalo News
"Adams works here [China Gates and the two-piano, four-hands Hallelujah Junction] have been recorded more than once before, but Shaham's interpretations of both are welcome additions to the discography. She and fellow keyboardist Jon Kimura Parker bring the kind of force and precision these intricate, passionate pieces demand. The infancy of Mackey's son inspired this piece [Stumble to Grace], which gradually develops from the staggering first steps of the opening movement to a virtuosic fugue in the finale …" — WQXR