John Adams
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John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. He learned the clarinet from his father and played in marching bands and community orchestras during his formative years. He began composing at the age of ten and heard his first orchestral pieces performed while still a teenager.
The intellectual and artistic traditions of New England, especially the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Harvard University, helped shape him as an artist and thinker. After earning two degrees from Harvard University, he moved to Northern California in 1971 and has ever since lived in the San Francisco Bay area.
Adams taught for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before becoming Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Symphony (1982-85) and the creator of the orchestra’s highly successful and controversial “New and Unusual Music” series. Several of Adams’s landmark orchestral works were written for and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony, including Harmonium (1981), Grand Pianola Music (1982), Harmonielehre (1985) and El Dorado (1992).
His well-known operas include ‘Nixon in China’ (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China 1972, and ‘Doctor Atomic’ (2005), which covers Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.
Adams taught for ten years at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music before becoming Composer in Residence with the San Francisco Symphony (1982-85) and the creator of the orchestra’s highly successful and controversial “New and Unusual Music” series. Several of Adams’s landmark orchestral works were written for and premiered by the San Francisco Symphony, including Harmonium (1981), Grand Pianola Music (1982), Harmonielehre (1985) and El Dorado (1992).
His well-known operas include ‘Nixon in China’ (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to China 1972, and ‘Doctor Atomic’ (2005), which covers Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.
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Shoutbox
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trashcity_ wrote:
John Adams is the Business
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headey wrote:
check the tag radio too : http://www.last.fm/tag/john%20adams
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kmysko wrote:
I Am Love is brilliant!
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toy-maker wrote:
happy father's day
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Candlewhack wrote:
John Adams is a p. cool guy.
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ACS360 wrote:
news [12] has a [4] kind of mystery
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CaesarTheSalad wrote:
Любите минимал блеать!
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Epitymbidia wrote:
I love "Grand Pianola Music"!
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JeanValjean1830 wrote:
Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops Shaker Loops
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Diothalamus wrote:
Century Rolls! what an exciting concerto!
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JeanValjean1830 wrote:
pretty?
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ACS360 wrote:
Awesome blog. (Eh, the music's pretty alright too...)
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JoshCIVM wrote:
Love him.
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ilcv wrote:
Just saw Luca Guadagnini's film "Io sono l'Amore" yesterday, had to give an extatic gasp when the opening credits started rolling to the sound of Harmonielehre. God, I'd forgotten how much I loved this piece. [2]
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bystrouska wrote:
Just saw Luca Guadagnini's film "Io sono l'Amore" yesterday, had to give an extatic gasp when the opening credits started rolling to the sound of Harmonielehre. God, I'd forgotten how much I loved this piece.
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imprecisely wrote:
MY KING
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Taxes wrote:
http://www.therestisnoise.com/2008/05/chapter-10-song-of-the-earth.html there's a full recording of 'Dark Waves' somewhere in there. worth the listen.
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elnimio wrote:
His violin concerto = hell yeah
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Crustclock wrote:
Harmonium .... wonderful, especially if you're familiar with the mood of the Dickinson poems
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xhotassdoodx wrote:
both john adams are post-minimalist
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The "Son" is Father to the Man
30 May 2011 | from www.earbox.com/posts
What drew me to the Austrian composer’s eponymous Opus 9
Chamber Symphony of 1906 were its explosive energy and the
staggering, acrobatic virtuosity of its instrumental writing.
Schoenberg’s bounding, fast moving themes weren’t so much “stated”
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Marcel Proost in the dark
2 Apr 2011 | from www.earbox.com/posts
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