John Adams

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. Works spanning more than three decades are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music, among them Nixon in China, Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic, Shaker Loops, El Niño, Short Ride in a Fast Machine and The Dharma at Big Sur.

His stage works, many in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, have transformed the genre of contemporary music theater. Of Adams’ best-known opera, the New Yorker magazine wrote “Not since ‘Porgy and Bess’ has an American opera won such universal acclaim as ‘Nixon in China’.”  A 2023 New York Times Arts & Leisure cover story called Adams “arguably our greatest living composer.”

Adams has received numerous Grammy awards, many of them for his over thirty releases on Nonesuch Records. To celebrate his 75th birthday Nonesuch Records released its “John Adams Collected Works,” a 40-CD box covering his entire output since 1973.

As conductor, Adams leads the world’s major orchestras in repertoire that from Beethoven and Mozart to Stravinsky, Ives, Carter, Glass and Ellington. Conducting engagements in recent and coming seasons include the London Symphony, Berliner Philharmoniker, the Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic and the New York Philharmonic. This past June he led the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic in a complete performance of his 1991 opera The Death of Klinghoffer at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.  As an advocate of young composers, Adams has conducted over 100 premieres of new works over the course of his career.

The coming season will include a new production at the Metropolitan Opera of Adams’s El Niño in a staging by Lileana Blain-Cruz, conducted by Marin Alsop; the European premiere of Antony and Cleopatra in Barcelona, staged by Elkhanah Pulitzer; several productions of Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic in Germany and Holland; and a new Nonesuch release of Girls of the Golden West with the composer conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In March of 2024 Simon Rattle will premiere Adams’s latest orchestral work, Frenzy, with the London Symphony Orchestra.

Born and raised in New England, Adams learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing at age ten and his first orchestral pieces were performed while just a teenager.

Adams has received honorary doctorates from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, Cambridge and The Juilliard School. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography ‘Hallelujah Junction’ and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.

Since 2009 Adams has been Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.