John Adams

Composer, conductor, and creative thinker — John Adams occupies a unique position in the world of music. His works stand out for their depth of expression, brilliance of sound, and profoundly humanist themes. His operas and oratorios, such as Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic, and El Niño, have transformed contemporary music theater, and works such as Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, and his Violin Concerto are among the most performed in all contemporary classical music.

As a conductor, Adams has led the world’s major orchestras, programming his own works alongside a wide variety of repertoire ranging from Beethoven and Debussy to Sibelius and Philip Glass. Conducting engagements in 2025–26 include return visits to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Houston Symphony (both with frequent collaborator Víkingur Ólafsson), The Cleveland Orchestra, and New World Symphony. Further afield, he returns to the Gothenburg Symphony, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Tokyo Metropolitan Symphony, and leads multiple concerts with The Hallé in a three-day festival of his music.

Among Adams’s honorary doctorates are those from Yale, Harvard, Northwestern, and Cambridge universities, as well as The Juilliard School. Other honors include Spain’s BBVA ​Frontiers of Knowledge Award, Holland’s Erasmus Prize, the Ditson Conductor’s Award from Columbia University, and an ​“Honorary Academician” appointment by the General Assembly of the Academicians of Santa Cecilia.

In celebration of Adams’s 75th birthday in 2022, Nonesuch Records released the 40-disc John Adams Collected Works, a box set spanning the composer’s over four-decade career with the label. Also available as a box set is the Berlin Philharmonic’s ​John Adams Edition, a CD and DVD collection comprising seven of his works, conducted by Simon Rattle, Gustavo Dudamel, Kirill Petrenko, Alan Gilbert, and Adams himself.

A five-time Grammy winner, Adams’s Nonesuch recording of his opera Girls of the Golden West with the Los Angeles Philharmonic received a 2024 Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording.

Adams is the author of the highly acclaimed autobiography Hallelujah Junction and is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review. Since 2009, he has been the creative chair of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.