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John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music , he is particularly noted for his operas , many of which center around historical events.
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- Overview
- Early life and career
- Ensembles, chamber music, and orchestral works
- Operas
- Other notable works from the 21st century
- Awards and honours
John Adams (born February 15, 1947, Worcester, Massachusetts, U.S.) American composer and conductor whose works were among the most-performed of contemporary classical music.
Adams became proficient on the clarinet at an early age (sometimes freelancing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and performing with other groups) and by his teenage years was composing. His teachers at Harvard University (A.B., 1969; M.A., 1971) included Leon Kirchner and Roger Sessions. Adams was the first Harvard student to be allowed to submit a musical composition as a senior honours thesis. After graduation he moved to California, where from 1972 to 1982 he taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In 1978 he founded and directed the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra’s series “New and Unusual Music,” and he was composer in residence with the orchestra from 1982 to 1985. From 2003 through 2007 he held the composer’s chair at Carnegie Hall in New York City, where he founded the eclectic and diverse “In Your Ear” festival. Increasingly as his career developed, he conducted performances of music by himself and by others, working with organizations such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), and the London Symphony Orchestra.
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Although his early compositions were in an academic style, Adams soon began drawing on much broader sources, including pop, jazz, electronic music, and minimalism. His use of minimalist techniques—characterized by repetition and simplicity—came to be tempered by expressive, even neo-Romantic, elements. His works encompass a wide range of genres and...
Adams’s most ambitious works, however, were his operas. The first two were created in collaboration with the director Peter Sellars, the poet Alice Goodman, and the choreographer Mark Morris. Nixon in China (1987) took as its subject the visit of U.S. Pres. Richard M. Nixon to China in 1972. The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) was based on the hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985 and the killing of a disabled Jewish passenger. The composer’s third opera, Doctor Atomic (2005), was the story of the scientists in Los Alamos, New Mexico, who during World War II devised the first atomic bomb. Sellars compiled the libretto from a variety of sources, including the favourite poetry of the Los Alamos physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as well as declassified government documents of the period.
In a departure from his 2005 statement that “if opera is actually going to be a part of our lives…it has to deal with contemporary topics,” Adams based his fourth opera, A Flowering Tree (2006), on South Indian folktales; again Sellars was his collaborator. The work was created in homage to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, taking as its inspiration The Magic Flute (1791). His next opera, Girls of the Golden West (2017), explored the tumult of the California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century.
Adams’s operas were regularly performed, and they were recorded; Nixon in China won a 1988 Grammy Award. A number of critics found them to be among the most significant of contemporary operas. Adams created orchestral and choral works from his opera scores, including The Nixon Tapes (1987), for voices and orchestra, and Doctor Atomic Symphony (2005). The Chairman Dances, subtitled “Foxtrot for Orchestra,” which was written for Nixon in China but dropped from the final score, became one of Adams’s most-often-played orchestral works.
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After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City commissioned a work from Adams: On the Transmigration of Souls, for orchestra, chorus, children’s choir, and prerecorded soundtrack, first performed September 19, 2002. The text of the work derived from three sources: fragments from notices posted at the World Trade Center site by friends and relatives of the missing, interviews published in the New York Times, and randomly chosen names of victims. For this composition Adams was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in music; the recording won three 2004 Grammy Awards.
Adams’s other notable works from the 21st century included the oratorios El Niño (2000), which reconsiders the Nativity, and The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012), a retelling of the Passion from the point of view of Mary of Bethany; her sister, Martha; and their brother, Lazarus. He also wrote The Dharma at Big Sur (2003), a composition for solo electric violin and orchestra.
In addition to his Grammy Awards, Adams received numerous other honours. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997. Also in 1997 he was named Composer of the Year by the venerable magazine Musical America. A festival in his honour at Lincoln Center in April and May of 2003 was the most extensive single-composer festival tha...
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jun 24, 2022 · Modern Classical Composer Known for ‘Nixon in China’ and ‘Short Ride in a Fast Machine’. The Library of Congress has acquired the music manuscripts and papers of contemporary American composer, conductor and writer John Adams.
Aug 31, 2022 · Adams, arguably our greatest living composer, has done operas inspired by recent history. In “Antony and Cleopatra,” he turns to Shakespeare. John Adams’s 75th year is being celebrated not...
John Adams, (born Feb. 15, 1947, Worcester, Mass., U.S.), U.S. composer. After studying at Harvard University, he taught at the San Francisco Conservatory and conducted widely. His compositions, initially strongly influenced by minimalism, became tempered by expressive elements.
Composer, conductor and creative thinker — John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes.
A splendid performance by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel emphasizes composer John Adams’ achievement in The Gospel According to the Other Mary.
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