John Adams

John Adams has left an indelible mark on the American classical music scene with a repertoire that spans the genres of orchestra, opera, musical theater, chamber, vocal, solo, and electro-acoustic works. The two-time Grammy Award-winner is one of the most recorded of all living composers, with numerous awards and honors to his credit. These two performances of El Niño mark the work's New York premiere, and are part of Great Performers' mini-festival-John Adams: An American Master. Other recent works in the series that highlight Adams' continuing evolution as an innovative musical thinker include Century Rolls, Naive and Sentimental Music, Guide to Strange Places, and Chamber Symphony, which received the 1994 Royal Philharmonic Society Award. Adams' newest work, entitled On the Transmigration of Souls, a co-commission by Lincoln Center's Great Performers and the New York Philharmonic to mark the events of September 11, premiered last September.

Known for addressing compelling social issues in both his opera and stage works, Adams began collaborations with poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars in 1985. These resulted in the creation of Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, two of the most performed  contemporary operas. Premiered by the Houston Grand Opera in October 1987 and performed at BAM that year, Nixon in China has been performed over 70 times, including an Emmy Award-winning telecast on PBS. This groundbreaking production was followed by The Death of Klinghoffer, an opera about the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro by a small group of Palestinian terrorists. The original Brussels production, directed by Peter Sellars, premiered in 1991 and was performed at BAM the same year. In 2003, Channel Four in England plans to screen a feature film version directed by Penny Woolcock with John Adams conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. The film will also be shown at Lincoln Center on May 13 as part of John Adams: An American Master.

John Adams was born in Massachusetts in 1947. By age fourteen, the community orchestra with which he practiced conducting premiered his first piece. In 1971, he graduated from Harvard with an MA in music composition and moved to California to begin a ten-year tenure as both teacher and conductor at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. While there, recognition for his innovative programming earned him a 1978 appointment as contemporary music advisor to the San Francisco Symphony. In 1982, Adams became the Symphony's first composer in residence, where he wrote some of his most important works, including Harmonielehre-scheduled for performance in Alice Tully Hall on Sunday, March 30-which established his reputation on a national scale. Recent honors include his 2003 appointment to the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer's Chair at Carnegie Hall, a 1997 Composer of the Year Award by Musical America magazine and becoming a Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 1995.

The Death of Klinghoffer — 1991/2003 Next Wave Festival