The work is named for American Standard Brand appliances[1] although Adams says that the title also reflects that the constituent movements are "indigenous musical forms" of the United States.
[1] The recording was of a 23 March 1973 performance at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art by the New Music Ensemble of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music of which Adams was director and was released together with two works by Christopher Hobbs and one by Gavin Bryars on an album called Ensemble Pieces.
[2] The middle movement, which includes slow tonal chords and a recorded sample of a preacher speaking,[3] has achieved notability independent of American Standard as a whole.
[5][6] The final movement is an "arrangement or reworking" of Duke Ellington's jazz standard "Sophisticated Lady" that separates melody from harmony.
[citation needed] Edo de Waart's 1986 recording of the piece with the San Francisco Symphony (appearing on the 1987 album The Chairman Dances) replaced this interview with a looped, fragmented, non-chronological recording of a Christian sermon on a miracle of Jesus, the healing the man with a withered hand, centered on the words "Why would Jesus have been drawn to a withered hand?