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One of America's most admired and frequently performed composers,
John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1947. After
graduating from Harvard University in 1971, he moved to California,
where he taught and conducted at the San Francisco Conservatory
of Music for ten years. His innovative concerts led to his appointment
firstly as contemporary music adviser to the San Francisco Symphony
and then as the orchestra's composer-in-residence between 1979 and
1985, the period in which his reputation became established with
the success of such works as Harmonium and Harmonielehre.
Recordings on the New Albion and ECM labels were followed in 1986
by an exclusive contract with Nonesuch Records, an association that
continues today.
In 1985 Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman
and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two operas, Nixon
in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, worldwide performances
of which made them among the most performed operas in recent history.
A third stage work, I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw
The Sky, a "song play" with libretto by the poet June
Jordan, was also staged in more than fifty performances in both
the US and Europe. His most recent stage project, El Niño,
a further collaboration with Peter Sellars, was premiered in Paris
in December 2000 and further performances took place in San Francisco
in January 2001.
Adams' works have received numerous awards, among them the 1994
Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his Chamber Symphony,
and the 1995 Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto.
In 2002 Adams composed On the Transmigration of Souls for
the New York Philharmonic, a work written in commemoration of the
first anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. This work received
the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music.
Adams' most recent orchestral compositions are My Father Knew
Charles Ives, and The Dharma at Big Sur. Ives
is a musical self-portrait of the composer's childhood in Concord,
New Hampshire, where he played in marching bands with his father
and first heard live jazz in the summer dance hall owned by his
grandfather. The work was premiered in April of 2003 by Michael
Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony. The Dharma at Big
Sur—to be presented at the Cabrillo Festival this season
on Saturday, August 14, was composed for the Los Angeles Philharmonic
and the opening of Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles in October
of 2003; scored for electric violin and orchestra, it is a tribute
by the composer to the maverick artists who have shaped the culture
of the West Coast.
In April and May of 2003 Lincoln Center presented a festival titled
"John Adams: An American Master," the most extensive festival
ever mounted at Lincoln Center devoted to a living composer.
Among the significant events of 2003 was the unveiling of new filmed
version of The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams' second opera,
directed by Penny Woolcock for Channel Four. The film, shot on location
in the Mediterranean and on board a cruise liner, breaks new ground
in the presentation of opera on film. The composer conducts the
London Symphony Orchestra in this film that had its American premiere
at the Sundance Festival and played at other international festivals
in Rotterdam, Buenos Aires, San Francisco and New York. In September
of 2003 Adams succeeded Pierre Boulez as Composer in Residence at
Carnegie Hall. His activities there include the planning and directing
of concerts in the new 600-seat Zankel Hall.
Adams is now composing a new opera with the working title Doctor
Atomic, based on the life of Robert Oppenheimer; it has been
commissioned by the San Francisco Opera to premiere in September
of 2005. Future projects also include a new orchestral work for
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, due in early 2006.
In celebration of a fifteen year partnership, in 1999 Nonesuch
Records released The John Adams Earbox, a 10-CD compilation
comprising almost all of the composer's music over a twenty year
period.
Adams continues to conduct regularly, appearing with the world's
greatest orchestras, and with programs combining his own works with
composers as diverse as Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel to Zappa,
Ives, Reich, Glass and Ellington. In recent seasons he has conducted
the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, the Los Angeles Philharmonic,
the Cleveland, Montreal and Philadelphia Orchestras, the Saint Paul
Chamber Orchestra and New York Philharmonic. European engagements
have included performances with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie,
Ensemble Modern, Oslo Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester
Berlin, Concertgebouw, Santa Cecilia and London Symphony Orchestra.
He is a regular guest at the BBC Proms concerts and performed there
with pianist Helene Grimaud during their 2003 season. Future appearances
this season include concerts with the Seattle Symphony, the BBC
Symphony, The Hessischer Rundfunk and the Finnish Radio Orchestra.
The music of John Adams is published by Boosey & Hawkes and
Associated Music Publishers.
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