John Adams (composer)

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For the Alaska-based postminimalist composer, see John Luther Adams.


John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer, with strong roots in minimalism.

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John Adams first recorded work was included on Brian Eno's Obscure Records LP "Ensemble Pieces", 1975. He won a Grammy Award in 1989 in the Best Contemporary Composition category for Nixon in China and in 1998 in the same category for El Dorado.

Adams' work On the Transmigration of Souls, a choral work commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music. However, after winning the award Adams expressed "ambivalence bordering on contempt" since he felt that the prize had "lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields" because "most of the country's greatest musical minds" have been ignored in favor of academy composers and musicians. [1]

The Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen gave the world premier of "Naive and Sentimental Music" in 1998, with Adams dedicating the piece to Salonen. Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic subsequently gave the world premiere of "The Dharma at Big Sur" (with Tracy Silverman as electric violin soloist) in 2003 as part of the opening gala concerts of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

For information prior to 2003, please see the Pulitzer Prize committee's biography, linked to below.

Adams's newest opera, Doctor Atomic, which premiered October 1, 2005, is also a collaboration with Peter Sellars. The action of the opera is centered on the very first test of the atomic bomb, and is mainly about Robert Oppenheimer. Adams later adapted some of the music from the opera to form a standalone symphony.

John Adams became the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Artist in Association in June 2003. In the words of Adams himself, "the position is sufficiently unstructured and flexible to allow any number of wild things to happen."

On 23 November 2004, the British Academy presented a Fellowship of the Academy to John Adams at the Barbican, London, following a concert with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by the composer and including his work Harmonium.

In 2005, the premiere recording of On the Transmigration of Souls (with Lorin Maazel conducting the New York Philharmonic) won three Grammy awards: Best Classical Album, Best Orchestral Performance, and Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

Other recent prizes include the Harvard Arts medal for 2007.




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