Person

Adams, John, 1947-

1947-

John Adams was born on February 15, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts.

He is an American composer and conductor. He grew up in Vermont and New Hampshire and received his early musical training from his father, with whom he studied clarinet and played in local marching bands. In 1971, having graduated from Harvard, where he studied with Leon Kirchner, Adams left New England for California, where he has lived ever since in the San Francisco Bay Area. Adams taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for a decade and, from 1978 to 1985, worked closely with the San Francisco Symphony, where conductor Edo de Waart became the first to champion his work. In the 1970s and 80s, Adams’ music played a decisive part in the creation and spread of a post-modern current within the contemporary art music tradition. In 1985, he began collaborating with Alice Goodman and Peter Sellars, producing two of the world’s most frequently performed operas of the past decades: Nixon in China (1984-1985) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-1991). This latter work was adapted for film by Penny Woolcock in 2003. His collaboration with Peter Sellars continued with the “song play” I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (1995); El Niño (1999-2000), an opera-oratorio whose multilingual libretto is a celebration of the turn of the millennium, and Doctor Atomic in 2005. In 2006, A Flowering Tree, an opera inspired by Mozart’s Magic Flute, premiered in Vienna. Their collaboration continued with an oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2012) and Girls of the Golden West, an opera about the Gold Rush, which premiered at the San Francisco Opera in 2017. Adams is also a conductor and has conducted the Houston Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony. Adams is the recipient of numerous prizes: e.g., the California Governor’s Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts (2000), Pulitzer Prize in Music for On the Transmigration of Souls (2003), 3 Grammies for “Best Classical Recording,” “Best Orchestral Performance,” and “Best Classical Contemporary Composition” for the 10-CD collection The John Adams Earbox from Nonesuch Records (2003), Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition (2004), Harvard Arts Medal (2007), Honorary doctorate from Harvard University( 2012), Honorary Doctorate from Yale University (2013), Honorary Doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music (London) (2015) and Erasmus Prize (2019).