John Adams

John Coolidge Adams is an American composer from Worcester, born in 1947, and associated with classical, classical crossover and contemporary classical music, with strong roots in minimalism. He begins composing at the age of ten and hears his first orchestral works performed while still a teenager. As a young musician, he learns the clarinet from his father and plays in marching bands and community orchestras.

He studies at Harvard University, where he earns two degrees, and is shaped by the intellectual and artistic life of New England, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1971 he moves to Northern California and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area thereafter. He teaches for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, then serves as Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Symphony from 1982 to 1985 and creates the orchestra’s “New and Unusual Music” series.

Adams writes several major orchestral works for the San Francisco Symphony, including Harmonium, Grand Pianola Music, Harmonielehre and El Dorado. His operas include Nixon in China, which deals with Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, and Doctor Atomic, which concerns Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project and the building of the first atomic bomb. His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishing.