John Adams

John Adams is perhaps the most influential minimalist composer to emerge in the wake of first-wavers like Steve Reich and Philip Glass. His work blends minimalist concepts with the influence of late Romantic composers to create works powered by insistent rhythmic pulses and short melodic phrases but fleshed out by a symphonic sense of tonality and harmony. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1947 to a singer and a clarinettist, Adams learned clarinet as a boy and was composing by age 10. At Harvard he studied with neo-classicists like Roger Sessions and David Del Tredici, but subsequently became fascinated with John Cage and the avant-garde, and began experimenting with electronic music. By the late ‘70s, Adams had become more immersed in symphonic settings, and in 1987 he premiered his first opera, Nixon in China, establishing a template for his modernist, politically charged operatic works. It stoked controversy at first but eventually earned great renown. His second opera, 1991’s The Death of Klinghoffer, dealing with Palestinian terrorism, proved even more contentious. But on the other end of the spectrum, his 9/11-themed 2002 choral piece On the Transmigration of Souls earned Adams a Pulitzer. He would go on crafting historically inspired, structurally inventive operas and oratorios for years to come.