The most famous American fanfare is Hail to the Chief. Next comes Aaron Copland’s thumping huff and puff in honor of “the Common Man.” Most fanfares are brilliant, some even aggressive (etymologists disagree on whether the word “fanfare” is onomatopoetic or actually connected with the verbal family that gives us “fanfaronade,” meaning blustering and bragging behavior), though John Adams has also explored the possibilities of the restrained and pianissimo fanfare (in his Tromba Lontana).

Short Ride in a Fast Machine es una pieza alegremente exuberante, brillantemente anotada para una gran orquesta. La marcación constante de un ritmo es típica de la música de Adams. Short Ride comienza con una marca de cuartos de nota (bloque de madera, al que pronto se unen las cuatro trompetas) y corcheas (clarinetes y sintetizadores); el bloque de madera es fortissimo y los otros instrumentos tocan forte. Adams ve al resto de la orquesta como el guante que pasa por ese túnel rítmico. Sobre el título: "¿Sabes lo que pasa cuando alguien te pide que vayas en un estupendo coche deportivo y luego deseas no haberlo hecho?"

Short Ride in a Fast Machine features the usual minimalist earmarks: repetition, steady beat, and, perhaps most crucially, a harmonic language with an emphasis on consonance unlike anything in Western art music in the last 500 years. Adams is not a simple—or simple-minded—artist. His concern has been to invent music at once familiar and subtle. For all of their minimalist features, works such as Harmonium, Harmonielehre, and El Dorado are full of surprises, always enchanting in the glow and gleam of their sonority, and bursting with the energy generated by their harmonic movement.

—Michael Steinberg (from The John Adams Reader), reprinted with kind permission of earbox.com