Written for the Los Angeles Philharmonic to celebrate the opening of Disney Hall in 2003, "The Dharma at Big Sur" (2003) is a two-movement work for solo electric six-string violin and orchestra. Adams wrote that with "Dharma", he "wanted to compose a piece that embodied the feeling of being on the West Coast – literally standing on a precipice overlooking the geographic shelf with the ocean extending far out to the horizon…" Inspired by the music of Lou Harrison, the piece calls for some instruments (harp, piano, samplers) to use just intonation, a tuning system in which intervals sound pure, rather than equal temperament, the common Western tuning system in which all intervals except the octave are impure.