Trivia

Winner of the 1995 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition for his composition "Violin Concerto" (1993).

He was the first Harvard undergraduate to be allowed to submit a musical composition as his required senior thesis; he earned an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, in 1969.

Son of Carl John Adams and Elinore Mary Coolidge Adams, both of whom were jazz musicians.

Taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1972 - 1982.

Was influenced by the musical minimalists Terry Riley and Steve Reich.

With director Peter Sellars he worked on an opera based on former president Richard Nixon's trip to the People's Republic of China in February 1972. The principal figures include Nixon, his wife Pat Nixon, Zedong Mao and his wife, Lan Ping, Enlai Zhou, and Henry Kissinger, not as political cartoons but as "mythological characters of our time." The world premiere was held on October 22, 1987. Later, Adams wrote another opera based on the Palestinian hijacking of the luxury cruise ship Achille Lauro in October 1985.

Graduated from San Francisco Conservatory of Music.