Gnarly Buttons is a 26-minute concerto for clarinet and small orchestra about the enduring influence made on Adams by his father, a clarinetist. It traces the instrument from the innocent and 'cool' t...
Written in 2003 for the opening of Disney Hall in Los Angeles, The Dharma at Big Sur draws influence from Kerouac's novel Big Sur and the electric violin playing of Tracy Silverman, the violinist of t...
This concerto won the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition in 1995, the most prestigious music prize in the world. In three movements, it is prime example of Adams as the most compelling contemporar...
John Adams emerged in the last decades of the twentieth century as one of the most influential and widely performed American composers since Copland. 'The Chairman Dances' is a 'foxtrot for orchestra'...
Adams' inspiration was Schiller's 1795 essay 'On Naive and Sentimental Poetry,' a discussion of artistic states of expression. In three movements.
A musical autobiography, this work is an homage to the influence of Ives' music on the composer.
Modeled on Stravinsky's 'Le Chant du Rossignol,' this 14-minute work for orchestra is an homage to the work and wit of Nicholas Slonimsky, the Russian eccentric literary genius who wrote The Thesaurus...
This propulsive concerto for string quartet and orchestra is built on fragments of Beethoven's late string quartets and other pieces.