The sparse Sellars production featured specially-commissioned artworks from Los Angeles street-artists, set against stark back projections on an otherwise empty stage.The question is: did the music work in the way Adams intended? Given his quoted admirable contempt for the products of the Lloyd Webbers of this world, I for one very much wanted him to succeed. Songs vary in manner from the amazing gospel number for the young black preacher David (attracting spontaneous audience applause and shouts of “Hallelujah”), through his lover Leila’s touching “Alone (Again or at Last)”, to an extraordinary trio for the three women (close harmonies with folksy overtones and a touch of the Andrews Sisters) in which a hymn to the male anatomy climaxes in what must be an operatic first – a paean to the penis.All this and more was performed with 100 per cent commitment by a really impressive line-up of young unknowns, all still in their twenties. Whereas Tippett refers to popular styles, with Adams we have a composer of great gifts who has grown up with this music on a daily basis. What he has set out to do in this work is to create a new, direct, accessible form of music-theatre, quoting Gershwin and Bernstein as his models (the American Kurt Weill seemed a closer parallel, to my mind).The singers use a non-classical, open vocal style, aided by amplification; the accompaniment is by a small, “rock” ensemble (in this case the Finnish group, Avanti!, conducted by Grant Gershon). Against a background of urban desolation and “a quasi-fascist ideology gaining power in the United States”, June Jordan chooses to affirm: “First and last this is a work about love.”The initial set-up of the opera, with its seven “representative” characters, its “socio-political” plot and its avowedly popular references, is curiously reminiscent of Tippett’s later operas The big difference is in the music. The earthquake, when it hits, is an emotional/psychological as much as a physical upheaval, which leaves each of the characters seeing their life in a different perspective.

The piece originated in a collaboration based at the University of California, Berkeley, between the composer John Adams, the poet/librettist June Jordan and the director Peter Sellars, who together set out to produce something for a “younger, broader audience”.
The story, an “earthquake/romance”, interweaves the lives and loves of the seven protagonists, all young and from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, against the backdrop of a contemporary, strife-torn California. Described not as an opera, but as a “story in songs”, it consists of 22 separate musical numbers, each with its own distinctive title (my favourite is “Song about arresting a Particular Individual”). His latest offering, already known for short as Ceiling / Sky and given its European premiere at the Edinburgh Festival on Monday, was a complete surprise – something new again. His two earlier stageworks, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, defined most powerfully a new form: “docu-opera”.

John Adams is never a predictable composer. Just when one piece and its style have been digested and pigeon-holed, along comes something completely different, to defy classification. It was strong stuff and if they’d held a revival meeting at the end of the show, we would all have signed up for Jesus.. Opening with an astonishingly soulful “I Believe” (a tribute to Sir Harry Secombe perhaps?), they just about sang their hearts out. Serious of mien, an eminence grise as the CIA-men’s head honcho has a right to be, Tabackin nevertheless looks like he’s barely suppressing an urge to go native and put on a Hawaiian shirt, rocking on his heels and bending low as he plays exquisitely expressive arabesques on the changes of each tune.The highlight was “Farewell to Mingus”, a tribute to Akiyoshi’s ex-employer, with Tabackin’s weeping tenor weaving in and out of a mournful trombone solo before the leader gradually called in her troops with stark, plangent stabs of harmony, the tonal colours unfurling like flags.To go immediately from Akiyoshi to a nearby outdoor stage for The Blind Boys of Alabama was, appropriately, like dying and going to heaven. While Akiyoshi plays some impressive, un-showy piano, the main solo spotlight goes to the tenor sax and flute of Lew Tabackin, who is also her husband.