your greedbagJohn Adams
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From: http://www.earbox.com/One of America's most admired and frequently performed composers, John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1947. After graduating from Harvard University in 1971, he moved to California, where he taught and conducted at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for ten years. His innovative concerts led to his appointment firstly as contemporary music adviser to the San Francisco Symphony and then as the orchestra's composer-in-residence between 1979 and 1985, the period in which his reputation became established with the success of such works as Harmonium and Harmonielehre. Recordings on the New Albion and ECM labels were followed in 1986 by an exclusive contract with Nonesuch Records, an association that continues today.
In 1985 Adams began a collaboration with the poet Alice Goodman and stage director Peter Sellars that resulted in two operas, Nixon in China and The Death of Klinghoffer, worldwide performances of which made them among the most performed operas in recent history. A third stage work, I Was Looking At The Ceiling And Then I Saw The Sky, a "song play" with libretto by the poet June Jordan, was also staged in more than fifty performances in both the US and Europe. His most recent stage project, El Nino, a fourth collaboration with Peter Sellars, was premiered in Paris in December 2000 and further performances took place in San Francisco in January 2001 and Berlin the folllowing April. The Nonesuch recording of El Nino, featuring Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Willard White and Kent Nagano, is the latest of Adams's many recordings. It was awarded the French Diapason Gold Medal and well as appearing on the "best album of the year" lists of the Boston Globe, Amazon.com and other publications.
Adams' works have received numerous awards, among them the 1994 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his Chamber Symphony, and the 1995 Grawemeyer Award for his Violin Concerto. Among other recent works are Century Rolls, a piano concerto written for Emanuel Ax; Naive and Sentimental Music, a 45-minute work for large orchestra written for and dedicated to Esa-Pekka Salonen; and Guide to Strange Places; which was premiered in Amsterdam in October of 2001 with the composer conducting.
Adams is the subject of a 90-minute documentary film by Tony Palmer, entitled Hail Bop!, which was first aired on Channel Four in England in 1998 and has since been televised in both Europe and the US. After a successful run of Nixon in China at the English National Opera in 2000, The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams's second opera, is being prepared for a feature film directed by Penny Woolcock for Channel Four to be screened in late 2002. The composer conducts the London Symphony Orchestra.
In celebration of a fifteen year partnership, in 1999 Nonesuch Records released The John Adams Earbox, a 10-CD compilation comprising almost all of the composer's music over a twenty year period.
Adams continues to conduct regularly, appearing with the world's greatest orchestras, and with programs combining his own works with composers as diverse as Debussy, Stravinsky and Ravel to Zappa, Ives, Reich, Glass and Ellington. In recent seasons he has conducted the Chicago and San Francisco Symphonies, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, the St Paul Chamber Orchestra and made his debut with the New York Philharmonic. European engagements have included performances with the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, Ensemble Modern, Oslo Philharmonic, Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, Concertgebouw, Santa Cecilia, London Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Orchestra with Felicity Lott at the BBC Proms.
The music of John Adams is published by Hendon Music (Boosey & Hawkes) and by Associated Music Publishers (G. Schirmer, Inc.)
John Adams's conducting activities are managed by Harrison/Parrott of London.
links
- http://www.earbox.com/ (official)