John Adams

Short Biography:
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker, “arguably our greatest living composer” (New York Times)—John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American 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.

Among Adams’s works are several of the most performed contemporary classical pieces today: Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, Chamber Symphony, Absolute Jest, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and his Violin Concerto. His stage works, many in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, include Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Tree, the Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and Girls of the Golden West. Adams’s most recent opera, Antony and Cleopatra, featuring a libretto adapted by the composer from Shakespeare’s tragedy, is presented at the Metropolitan Opera in spring 2025, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer with the composer conducting.

This season, Adams’s piano concerto for Vikingur Ólafsson, After the Fall, premieres with the San Francisco Symphony and David Robertson in 2025, and tours to the Switzerland, Germany, France, and Austria.

Adams is the 2019 recipient of the Erasmus Prize “for notable contributions to European culture, society and social science”—the only American composer to be so honored in the prize’s 61-year history. As an advocate of his composer colleagues Adams has premiered over 100 new works ranging from composers such as Glass, Riley, Rihm, Wolfe, and Gordon to works by young emerging composers. He received the 2021 Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University in recognition for his “exceptional commitment to American composers.” Adams has additionally received honorary doctorates from Harvard, Yale, Northwestern University, Cambridge University, and the Juilliard School. Since 2009 he has held the position of Creative Chair with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction whose writings have appeared in both The New Yorker Magazine and the New York Times Book Review.

As a conductor of his own works and wide variety of repertoire, Adams has appeared with the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, among others. He has had especially close releationships over four decades with the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he has been Creative Chair since 2009.

In 2022, Nonesuch Records released the 40-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set of recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label.

September 2024
This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programs with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.

Long Biography:
Composer, conductor, and creative thinker, “arguably our greatest living composer” (New York Times)——John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of American music. His works, both operatic and symphonic, stand out among contemporary classical compositions for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and the profoundly humanist nature of their themes. Over the past 40 years, Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language, entirely characteristic of his New World surroundings.

Works spanning more than three decades have entered the repertoire and are among the most performed of all contemporary classical music, among them Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, Chamber Symphony, Absolute Jest, Short Ride in a Fast Machine, and his Violin Concerto. His stage works, many in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, include Nixon in China (1987), The Death of Klinghoffer (1991), El Niño (2000), Doctor Atomic (2005), A Flowering Tree (2006), the Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012), and Girls of the Golden West (2017). Adams’s most recent opera, Antony and Cleopatra, featuring a libretto adapted by the composer from Shakespeare’s tragedy, is presented at the Metropolitan Opera in spring 2025, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer with the composer conducting.

This season, Adams’s piano concerto for Vikingur Ólafsson, After the Fall, premieres with the San Francisco Symphony and David Robertson in 2025, and tours to the Switzerland, Germany, France, and Austria.

Adams is the 2019 recipient of the Erasmus Prize “for notable contributions to European culture, society and social science,” the only American composer to be so honored in the prize’s 61-year history. As an advocate of his composer colleagues Adams has premiered over 100 new works ranging from composers such as Glass, Riley, Rihm, Wolfe, and Gordon to works by young emerging composers. He received the 2021 Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University in recognition for his “exceptional commitment to American composers.” Other awards include the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for composing On the Transmigration of Souls, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the first anniversary of 9/11 and the 1993 Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto. Adams has additionally received honorary doctorates from Harvard, Yale, Northwestern University, Cambridge University, the Juilliard School, and the Royal Academy of Music. Adams was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts Opera Award in 2009. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction whose writings have appeared in both The New Yorker Magazine and the New York Times Book Review.

As a conductor, Adams appears with the world’s major orchestras in programs combining his own works with a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Mozart and Beethoven to Sibelius, Stravinsky, Bartok, Zappa, Glass, and Ellington. In recent seasons he has conducted the Berliner Philharmoniker, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, Wiener Symphoniker, the orchestras of Seattle, Cleveland, Rotterdam, the New York Philharmonic, the BBC Symphony and Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, among others. He has had especially close releationships over four decades with the Cleveland Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, where he has been Creative Chair since 2009. He has twice been Music Director of the California’s Ojai Festival.

In 2022, Nonesuch Records released the 40-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set of recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer’s career with the label. Other recent releases include the world premiere recording of Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (Deutsche Grammophon 2020), featuring Yuja Wang, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and conductor Gustavo Dudamel; the world premiere recording of Doctor Atomic (Nonesuch 2018), with Adams conducting the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra; and the Berliner Philharmoniker’s “John Adams Edition,” a 2017 box set of live performances conducted by Adams, Gustavo Dudamel, Alan Gilbert, Kirill Petrenko, and Sir Simon Rattle.

Together with his wife, the photographer Deborah O’Grady, Adams has created the Pacific Harmony Foundation, which funds young composers, ensembles and music education outreach. Their daughter Emily Davis Adams is a painter and their son is composer Samuel Carl Adams.

The official John Adams website is www.earbox.com.

September 2024
This biography can be reproduced free of charge in concert programs with the following credit: Reprinted by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes.