John Adams

John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, and his early upbringing was steeped in the musical traditions of the postwar USA: playing the clarinet in a high-school marching band, discovering the classical repertoire at concerts by the Boston Symphony, and (in the late 1960s) studying composition at Harvard. Troubled by the rift that he observed between Boulezian modernism and the music (Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Bob Dylan) that defined his own generation's culture, he moved to San Francisco and evolved a personal musical language grounded in the teachings of John Cage, the emerging "minimalist" scene and the vibrant popular culture of the 1970s West Coast. With the string septet Shaker Loops (1978), the choral symphony Harmonium (1981) and the symphonic triptych Harmonielehre (1985) he embraced classical forms on the largest scale. His 1987 opera Nixon in China and its successors The Death of Klinghoffer (1991) and Doctor Atomic (2005) took Adams's fascination with Americana - and his vivid but sophisticated musical language - into major opera houses, while the orchestral Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986) has become an undisputed popular classic. In his eighth decade he continues to receive commissions from major orchestras and opera houses, with large scale works addressing themes as varied as the environment, feminism, 9/11 and the twin legacies of American pop culture and the European classical tradition.