Noteworthy

By Kyle MacMillan

As John Adams approaches his 80th birthday in 2027, discussions inevitably turn to the respected American composer’s legacy. But he does not get swept up in such talk, noting operatic creator Giacomo Meyerbeer’s drop from being hugely famous in the 19th century to nearly forgotten 100 years later. 

“I keep a portrait of Meyerbeer on my wall—not a real one, a mental one—just to remind myself of how important it is to be humble, because Meyerbeer was as popular in his era as John Williams is today,” Adams said. “Reputations and favourites come and go.”

As true as all that might be, though, it seems hard to believe that history will not be kind to the GRAMMY® Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, one of the United States’ most famous, most prolific, and most programmed composers of the past half-century. His latest moment in the spotlight will come November 6 and 9, when he returns for the third time to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to guest conduct a program that will include two of his works plus Le livre de Baudelaire, his orchestration of four songs by Claude Debussy.

Unlike some composers who dabble in conducting or only lead their own works, Adams has taken the pursuit seriously for nearly his entire career. “For the last 35–40 years,” he said, “I’ve been extremely fortunate to be invited to go around the world conducting. I do programs that are mixed. It isn’t just contemporary music. I do Ravel, Mozart, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Debussy. And obviously, I almost always do a piece of mine, because that’s the main reason why I’m invited.”

In addition to taking the podium, Adams will participate in the latest edition of the TSO’s Explore the Score program at 10:00am on November 9. In closed sessions, the orchestra will perform readings of works by four of Canada’s top emerging composers—Paul Kawabe, Michelle Lorimer, Michael Maevskiy, and Sky Yang—with Adams taking part in a feedback session afterward. “As long as I can remember, which now is more than 50 years, I’ve been working with younger composers and conducting their music,” he said. “I take it very seriously, and I enjoy it.”

After several decades in which atonality almost monopolized the classical music world, Adams emerged in the 1970s when the pioneering minimalists—Philip Glass, Terry Riley, and Steve Reich—were guiding the field back to a tonal realm. And with oft-played works like Short Ride in a Fast Machine (1986), he put his stamp on the iterative elements associated with that style. But while minimalist tinges can still sometimes be found in his newer works, he long ago shed the label of a “minimalist,” branching into new directions, drawing inspiration from a range of musical sources past and present. “By the time I wrote The Death of Klinghoffer [his second opera], which is 1990–1991, my language had changed profoundly,” he said. 

Like Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, or Florence Price, Adams has to be counted among the most American of American composers. He mines American history in works like Girls of the Golden West (2017), an opera set during the Gold Rush of the 1850s, and draws on popular, idiomatic musical styles like jazz, ragtime, and gospel in such works as his third piano concerto, Must the Devil Have All the Good Tunes? (2018).

Adams’s Toronto program culminates with Frenzy, his newest orchestral work, which Sir Simon Rattle (its dedicatee and Adams’s long-time friend) and the London Symphony Orchestra premièred on March 4, 2024. The piece, which was co-commissioned by the London Symphony, the TSO, and four other organizations, is what Adams describes as a “kind of short symphony” that explores the multiple meanings of the word, “frenzy.” I’m very excited about it,” he said. “I think Frenzy is a really good piece. It’s about 18 minutes, and it’s not all frenetic. It’s mostly the ending that is frenetic.” 

Although Adams has written important works across a range of classical music forms, he is best known for his nine stage works, particularly his six operas, including his most recent, Antony and Cleopatra, a massive adaptation of the classic Shakespearean drama. “It’s the most puzzling thing,” the composer said. “I never had any interest in opera when I was growing up. I can’t sing. I can’t even find the pitches at the ballgame to sing ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. Nevertheless, for some reason, I ended up in opera.” And few, if any, other modern composers have been more successful in the realm.

The Toronto program will include “This is prophetic!” (often called “Pat’s Aria”) from Adams’s first opera, Nixon in China (1987), one of the few late 20th-century works in the form to find a regular place on the world’s opera stages. Though certainly inspired by Richard Nixon’s breakthrough trip to China in 1972, it is a stylized and fictionalized meditation on that important historical milestone. “It’s actually a very subtle balance among the elements of humour, history, politics, and then personal relationships, the relationships between man and wife—Mao and his wife, and Nixon and Pat,” Adams said.

In this haunting aria inspired by Pat Nixon’s visit to China’s Summer Palace, the spotlight shifts to the sometimes overlooked First Lady as she sings of a brighter future for America and the world. Like the aria “Batter my heart” from Adams’s third opera, Doctor Atomic, this excerpt has become a hit with singers and is often performed at vocal auditions. The composer describes the aria, with text by librettist Alice Goodman, as lyrical and “very Whitmanesque,” a reference to the celebrated 19th-century American poet Walt Whitman. “It’s just the most beautiful poetry and so luminous and evocative,” he said.

After the opening work, Maurice Ravel’s Alborada del gracioso, the program will continue with Adams’s orchestration of Debussy’s song cycle Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1887–1889), originally created for voice and piano. “It seemed to me that they were crying out for orchestral settings,” Adams said. But, notably, his 1994 version, Le livre de Baudelaire, contains just four of the original songs, with the composer omitting the final one. “As a group, the four songs feel just right,” he said. “The last song, I felt, no matter what I did with it, it would be just kind of de trop [too much]. That fourth song just floats off into the atmosphere in the most wonderful way, so I felt I did the right thing.” 

Serving as soloist for both “This is prophetic!” and Le livre de Baudelaire is the Austrian-British soprano Anna Prohaska, one of two performers chosen by Music Director Gustavo Gimeno to be the TSO’s Spotlight Artists for 2024/25. In addition to taking part in two concert programs, she will participate in ancillary TSO events. Adams described her as a “very exciting singer,” and he believes these two selections will fit her vocal talents well.

“I’ve actually never performed works by John Adams,” Prohaska said via email, “and this is particularly why this concert appealed to me so much. Not only to work with John as a conductor but also as a composer in both senses of the word: on the one hand, one of his very own works, Nixon in China (he actually suggested ‘This is prophetic!’, Pat Nixon’s aria that develops a kind of undertow, a slipstream into the sound world—it’s addictive, to be honest!) and then another work that he orchestrated, Claude Debussy’s Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire. I’m very, very excited and interested to see what John Adams made of the [song] cycle. Of course, I’ve heard recordings of it, but it’s always very different performing the works.”

Unlike some composers whose creativity slows down later in their careers (think Copland), Adams remains as busy and artistically fecund as ever. Frenzy is one in a series of three major recent works, including a piano concerto that Víkingur Ólafsson and the San Francisco Symphony will première in January 2025. Antony and Cleopatra will receive its Metropolitan Opera première from May 12 to June 7, 2025. Despite such prolificacy, Adams freely admits that composition never gets any easier. “Starting a new piece is the hardest thing in the world,” he said. “It’s always an existential crisis.” 

TSO’s Explore the Score with John Adams: A Rare Opportunity for Emerging Composers

This year, the TSO’s Explore the Score session will feature a special guest—the legendary composer John Adams. One of the TSO’s artistic-development programs, Explore the Score offers emerging composers an incredible opportunity to hear their works rehearsed by a professional orchestra and to receive feedback from leading voices in contemporary music.

Adams will join RBC Resident Conductor Trevor Wilson, Composer Advisor Emilie LeBel, RBC Affiliate Composer Liam Ritz, and TSO musicians to mentor participants in this exclusive session. Explore the Score is a cornerstone of the TSO’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of composers—and Adams’s presence this year makes it truly extraordinary.