Adams, John

John Coolidge Adams is an American composer and conductor born on 15th February 1947.  Born into a musical family, he attended Harvard and studied with Roger Sessions, Leon Kirchner and David Del Tredici and was the first Harvard student to be allowed to write a musical composition for his senior thesis. He was heavily influenced by John Cage, particularly after reading Cage’s book “Silence: Writings and Letters” (which was given to Adams by his mother) and consequently moved away from the modernist and serial music, towards minimalism, gaining much attention with works such as Phrygian Gates, Harmonium, Harmonielehre, and Shaker Loops. Compared to other minimalist composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, his style is richer and more textured.    Although Adams is particularly noted for his operas such as Nixon in China (1987) which recounts the visit to China by (now disgraced) American President Richard Nixon, for which he won a Grammy Award in 1989, the controversial (because of its’ subject matter) 1991 composition The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic about Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project, his extensive list of composition includes important piano works such as the Phrygian Gates and China Gates, a Violin Concerto, Road Movies for Violin and Piano, as well as orchestrations and arrangements of woks by Liszt, Debussy, Ives and Piazzolla. Among many awards Adams has received, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his 2002 composition On the Transmigration of Souls, five Grammy Awards, and six honorary doctorates.