大象传媒

Donald Macleod talks to John Adams, the composer who has risen to become one of the most popular composers in America's concert halls.

He takes the composer through his life from his early years as a composer in 1970s California and minimalism, his work during the 1980s - a time of gathering momentum for Adams, despite being a dissenting voice against the prevailing political wind. Macleod then explores with the composer how his music evolved beyond the orthodoxies of minimalism that had influenced his earlier works, and at how he consolidated his position as one of America's most enterprising young composers. Composer and presenter then move to look at the 1990s, a controversial decade for the composer. As the first Gulf war flared up, his opera The Death of Klinghoffer was staged, but it was also a time when his work developed a rich lyrical and melodic vein in works such as his Violin Concerto.