
Influenced by the minimalism of composers such as Steve Reich and Philip Glass, it has moved on to a highly personal, distinctive level all of Adams’s own. The relative weakness of this element is the difficulty. He is not afraid of tackling politically charged subjects, and Klinghoffer, Adams’s recounting of the Achille Lauro terrorist incident of 1985, has often attracted protest.Īdams’s music is rooted in the driving pulses and emotional directness of American popular music, and is far away in style and approach from the dissonant modernism of much contemporary music. John Adams (composer), Fire is dominant in your natal chart and endows you with intuition, energy, courage, self-confidence, and enthusiasm You are inclined to be passionate, you assert your willpower, you move forward, and come hell or high water, you achieve your dreams and your goals. Starting with Nixon in China – which is essentially a study of the culture clash between the United States and China – these include The Death of Klinghoffer El Niño, a Hispanic take on the Christmas story Doctor Atomic, about the testing of the first atomic bomb The Gospel According to the Other Mary, a Passion oratorio concerning the biblical Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha, but given a biblical and contemporary narrative by Sellars and, most recently, Girls of the Golden West, which examines the Californian Gold Rush.

His operas, usually in collaboration at some level with the director–librettist Peter Sellars, are among the most controversial and successful in recent years. This American classical composer writes rock songs as well as concertos and has a home studio complete with contemporary synths and a computerbased. New England-born, California-based composer John Adams is a pivotal figure in 20th century classical music - he can be viewed as either the last of the minimalists or the first of the post-minimalists. His impressive body of work encompasses expressive and richly scored orchestral works such as Harmonium, Harmonielehre, and Naïve and Sentimental Music, as well as the very popular Short Ride in a Fast Machine. After graduating from Harvard in the late 1960s, he relocated to the West Coast and has lived in California ever since. John Adams, composer, conductor, and creative thinker, occupies a unique position in the world of classical music. Minimalist music uses repeated patterns of notes over a steady beat - find out more about minimalism. He is known for writing minimalist music. One of the leading American contemporary composers, John Adams was born and raised in New England, where he was exposed to both classical music and jazz from an early age. John Adams is an American composer and conductor.
