Composer and conductor John Adams is a unique figure in the world of American music.  Some of his pieces rank among the most frequently performed contemporary music of our time: Harmonielehre, Shaker Loops, Chamber Symphony, Absolute Jest, Short Ride in a Fast Machine and his Concerto for violin. His stage works include Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Tree, the oratorio Gospel According to the Other Mary, Girls of the Golden West. His newest opera Antony and Cleopatra premiered at the San Francisco Opera in Septembre 2022. John Adams is the 2019 recipient of the Erasmus Prize, awarded to him “for notable contributions to European culture, society and social sciences.” He has conducted the world premieres of more than a hundred new works by musicians such as Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Wolfgang Rihm, Julia Wolfe and Michael Gordon, but also promising young composers. In 2021, he received the Orchestra Conducting Ditson Award from Columbia University “for exceptional commitment to the performance of American composers”. Harvard, Yale, Northwestern University, Cambridge University and the Juilliard School have conferred honorary doctorates (doctor honoris causa) on him. Since 2009, he has held the position of “Creative Chair” with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He wrote the autobiography Hallelujah Junction. In 2022, to celebrate his 75th birthday, Nonesuch Records released John Adams Collected Works, a box set featuring recordings spanning more than four decades of the composer's career with the label.Reproduced with kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes