Hallelujah Junction

Starred review from September 1, 2008
Best known for his groundbreaking musical works Nixon in China
and The Death of Klinghoffer
, Adams helped shape the landscape of contemporary classical music. Combining the narrative power of opera, the atonal themes of 20th-century classical music, the spooky modulations of jazz and the complex rhythms of the Beatles and the Band, Adams created a new music that could express the fractiousness of the political scene of the 1960s and 1970s. In this entertaining memoir, Adams deftly chronicles his life and times, providing along the way an incisive exploration of the creative process. A precocious musician, Adams began playing clarinet in the third grade, and, after hearing his teacher read Mozart's biography, tried his hand at composing music. During his undergraduate years at Harvard, he threw himself into performing and conducting when his own inadequacies as a composer began to dawn on him. By his final year at Harvard, however, the chaos of the late 1960s and the creative turbulence of the music scene drove him back to composing. After two years in graduate school, Adams set out for California, where he taught numerous composition classes and private clarinet lessons while working on his own music and with a who's who of the music world, from Cage and Leonard Bernstein to Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Adams's searingly introspective autobiography reveals the workings of a brilliant musical mind responsible for some of contemporary America's most inventive and original music.

September 15, 2008
Celebrated American composer and conductor Adams's memoir chronicles his life from his upbringing as a talented clarinetist in rural New England to his countercultural coming-of-age as a Harvard undergraduate in the 1960s to his embrace of the musical life and vibrant scene of the Bay Area. Adams writes candidly of his compositions and those of his contemporaries in language accessible to the lay reader. Adamsthrough his engaging orchestral works, such as the Pulitzer Prize-winning "On the Transmigration of Souls" and his several landmark "docu-operas" like "Nixon in China" and "Doctor Atomic" (opening at the New York Metropolitan Opera this October)has emerged as one of the most admired of all living composers. His book proceeds chronologically, but Adams frequently pauses to reflect on the nature of composing and the state of contemporary music. As one of the most inclusive of contemporary composershis palette covers pop, jazz, and myriad global idiomshe shares his unique perspective on the multiple traditions that inform his musical language. Adams writes articulately about his life and works and the larger social context from which they emerge. Highly recommended for all collections.Larry Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2008
In his New England childhood, Adams listened to records, learned clarinet, and even conducted small groups. At Dartmouth, he discovered such modernist composers as Carter, Nancarrow, Copland, Chvez, and Kodly, and substituted in the Boston Symphony in Schoenbergs Moses and Aron. After six years at Harvard, honing his conducting skills and starting to compose, he moved to teach at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where his career blossomed. While John Cage influenced his instrumental music that includes synthesizers and taped passages, Adams is best known for the documentary operas Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic. Not a memoir per se, this book is first and foremost about Adams major compositions and incidentally concerned with the culture in which they were produced and the people with whom they were developed, including theatrical director Peter Sellars and poet Alice Goodman. It provides enlightening insight into the fertile mind of one of the most important and popular contemporary composers and conductors.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)