Century Rolls

Century Rolls is a piano concerto by the American composer John Adams. Commissioned by Emanuel Ax, the work dates from 1997. Ax was the soloist in the concerto's premiere on September 25, 1997 in Cleveland, Ohio, with Christoph von Dohnányi conducting The Cleveland Orchestra. Ax, von Dohnányi and The Cleveland Orchestra made the first commercial recording of the concerto, for Nonesuch. Adams himself conducted the UK premiere on 1 November 1998, again with Ax as the piano soloist. Century Rolls was additionally featured during the 2008 ISCM World Music Days in Vilnius, Lithuania in a performance by pianist Petras Geniušas with the Lithuanian National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Juozas Domarkas in the National Philharmonic Hall on 25 October 25 2008.

Adams conceived the work after hearing the distinct sounds of a 1920s player-piano, and the work was "in part an attempt to recreate that initial response I had received to the sound of the piano as heard via the medium of the piano roll." He has said that the concerto is his view on "the whole past century of piano music". In addition to the temporal element ("Century"), the title refers to old piano rolls.