His stage works, all in collaboration with director Peter Sellars, have transformed the genre of contemporary music theater. Of Adams’ best-known opera, the New Yorker magazine wrote: "Not since Porgy and Bess has an American opera won such universal acclaim as Nixon in China." His new opera about the California Gold Rush, Girls of the Golden West, will premiere in November of 2017 in San Francisco.
Nonesuch Records has recorded all of Adams' music over the past three decades. The latest release is Scheherazade.2, Adams' latest work, a dramatic symphony for violin and orchestra written for Leila Josefowicz.
As a conductor, Adams leads the world’s major orchestras in repertoire that from Beethoven and Mozart to Stravinsky, Ives, Carter, Zappa, Glass, and Ellington. Conducting engagements in recent and coming seasons include the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Berliner Philharmoniker, London Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Philharmonic, Wiener Symphoniker and BBC Symphony, as well as the orchestras in Houston, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Seattle, Miami, Baltimore, Madrid, and Barcelona.
In 2017 Adams celebrated his seventieth birthday with festivals of his music in Europe and the US, including special retrospectives at London’s Barbican, at Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in Amsterdam, New York, Geneva, Stockholm, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.
Born and raised in New England, Adams learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing at age ten and his first orchestral pieces were performed while just a teenager.
Adams is Creative Chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He has received honorary doctorates from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, Cambridge and The Juilliard School. A provocative writer, he is author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review.
The official John Adams website is www.earbox.com.
