Biography

February 15, 1947 · Worcester, Massachusetts, USA

John Coolidge Adams

My roots are profoundly affected by American popular music, jazz, ragtime, swing, rock. I'm not a quoter, nor a musical chameleon like William Bolcom, but my personal style does not deny its roots. In today's so-called classical music, we've lost track of the vernacular. [Opera News, October 1987]

On the hostile reaction to The Death of Klinghoffer (2003): Hey, it's hard to speak of this as if it's important. It's only an opera! What really counts in our society is Madonna, hip-hop and television.

I have to choose my words carefully. In the United States there is very little opportunity for the Palestinians to make their case. In fact, extreme pressure is exerted on how information is framed in the press and on TV. So the use of the word terrorism has become very controlled. If you are a mother hiding in your apartment in Gaza, and an Israeli missile kills your children, you might think that this was terrorism. But in the US that word can't be used in association with that kind of action. Particularly here in New York the fact that I had given a chorus to the Palestinians was taken by some people as political bias.

Pierre Boulez has said some charming things about me. From an early age I was inspired by great composers, writers, choreographers and painters who could say something immensely important, yet also reach a lot of people. Those 19th-century giants - Beethoven, Tolstoy, Dickens, Wagner, Zola - had enormous audiences. Maybe that's not possible for a serious artist today, because even very intelligent people are distracted - by TV or movies - from reading novels or listening to serious music. But if I've had success it's because I've found ways to make statements that have integrity but are appreciable beyond a tight little circle of cognoscenti. Which was not the case with serious contemporary music when I was at [Harvard in the 1960s]. We had models, such as Boulez, who were real musical snobs.