John Adams

Born: February 15, 1947. Worcester, Massachusetts
Died:

American composer and conductor. Along with Steve Reich and Philip Glass, one of the leading composers in the minimalist style.

John Adams received his first musical instruction (in clarinet) from his father. As a youth, he played in an amateur orchestra sponsored by the New Hampshire State Hospital, which regularly gave concerts for the mentally ill patients. Adams describes this experience as important in forming his ideas about the power of music. It was at one of these concerts, when Adams was fourteen, that his first orchestral piece was premiered. He continued studying music at Harvard, working with some of the leading composers of the academic traditions of twelve-tone and serial composition. Adams never felt at home with these styles, and after leaving Harvard he moved to the West Coast to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory, where he thought he could escape what he saw as an East Coast fixation with serialism. He became interested in the music of John Cage, but was also captivated by the music of minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass. This became the core of his musical style, and he embarked on a program to take that style and infuse it with more expressiveness and lyricism. This blend is the hallmark of his style as it has developed. He also developed a long-lasting relationship with the San Francisco Symphony and has been a leading advocate for new music in the traditional setting of the symphony orchestra. Since then he has served as composer-in-residence for a number of orchestras, and in 2003 he will begin a term as composer-in-residence at Carnegie Hall. Over the years he has garnered a number of major awards, and he is one of the most recorded living composers.

Adams's music tends to fall into two categories. The first is that of the lyrical minimalist style, seen in such pieces as Shaker Loops and Harmonielehre. The other is a more comical style, making use of vernacular elements and showing the influence of Charles Ives. His Chamber Symphony, for example, was inspired in part by the music of the classic Warner Brothers' cartoons. His dramatic music often takes as its basis seminal modern events: Nixon's visit to China, the murder of Leon Klinghoffer on the hijacked Achille Lauro, and, most recently, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (On the Transmigration of Souls).

Works:

Stage works, including Nixon in China (1987), The Death of Klinghoffer (1990–91), I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995), and El Niño (2000)
Orchestral work, including The Chairman Dances (orchestral fantasy on themes from Nixon in China, 1985), Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), Violin Concerto (1993), and Lollapalooza (1995
Chamber music, including Phrygian Gates (1977), Shaker Loops (1978), Grand Pianola Music with 3 female voices and chamber ensemble, 1982), and Chamber Symphony (1992)
Tape and electronic works, including Heavy Metal (1970) and Hoodoo Zephyr (1992–93)
Various arrangements, including orchestrations of some tangos by Astor Piazzolla

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