John Adams, one of America’s most admired and respected composers, is a musician of enormous range and technical command. His many operatic and symphonic works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, their sonic brilliance, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes.
Born and raised in New England and educated at Harvard, Adams moved in 1971 to California, where he taught for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory and was composer-in-residence at the San Francisco Symphony.
Adams’s operatic works are among the most successful of our time. Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, all created in collaboration with stage director Peter Sellars, draw their subjects from archetypical themes in contemporary history. Doctor Atomic has its New York premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in October 2008 under conductor Alan Gilbert, in a new production by Penny Woolcock.
On the Transmigration of Souls, written for the New York Philharmonic to mark the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music, and won a rare “triple crown” of Grammy awards: “Best Classical Recording”, “Best Orchestral Performance”, and “Best Classical Contemporary Composition”.
In 2003, a film version of The Death of Klinghoffer, directed by Penny Woolcock and with the composer conducting the London Symphony Orchestra, was released in theaters, on television, and on DVD. Wonders Are Many, a documentary by Jon Else on the making of Doctor Atomic, premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was a New York Times Critics’ Pick.
Adams has been awarded honorary degrees and proclamations by Cambridge University, Harvard University, Yale School of Music, Phi Beta Kappa, the governor of California, the French Legion of Honor, and Northwestern University, where he was awarded the first Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition.
Nonesuch Records released Adams’s Harmonielehre in 1985, and all of his works since then have appeared first on that label. A ten-CD set, “The John Adams Earbox”, documents his recorded music through 2000.
Hallelujah Junction, Adams’s recently-completed volume of memoirs and commentary on American musical life, is being published in October 2008 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the U.S. and by Faber & Faber in the U.K. The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer (Amadeus Press, 2006), edited by Thomas May, is the first in-depth anthology of texts dealing with more than 30 years of Adams’s creative life.
John Adams is active as a conductor, appearing with the world’s greatest orchestras. A regular guest at the BBC Proms, he has appeared in recent seasons with such orchestras as the London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and New York Philharmonic, and with orchestras in Atlanta, Stockholm, San Francisco, and Detroit. From 2003 to 2007 he was composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall and conducted the first public concert in Carnegie’s new space, Zankel Hall.
The official John Adams web site is www.earbox.com. The music of John Adams is published by Boosey & Hawkes and by Associated Music Publishers.
