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MEDIA CONTACT: Judy Moore at 847-491-4819
or jkm229@northwestern.edu
PDF version of this
press release
EVANSTON, Ill. --- The Northwestern University School of Music
today (June 2) announced that John Adams is the inaugural winner
of the $100,000 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition.
The biennial award honors classical music composers of outstanding
achievement.
Adams was cited by the selection committee for "his fusing
of a wide range of styles into a voice entirely new and distinctive,
and for his connection to and reflection of the world around
us." As winner of the Nemmers Prize, he receives a cash
award of $100,000, a performance of one of his works by the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra during the 2005-2006 season, and will serve
a residency at Northwestern University School of Music.
"I am tremendously honored to be selected as the first
composer to receive the Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition," said
Adams. "It comes as both a surprise and a delight to know
that my music is so highly regarded. I look forward to my residency
at the Northwestern School of Music. Spending significant time
with students is something I have missed very much in recent
years."
"John Adams is a giant in the field of composition," said
Northwestern School of Music Dean Toni-Marie Montgomery. "As
one of the most performed living American composers, it is clear
that he has captured the imagination of both musicians and audiences.
His presence on our campus will be of great interest and benefit
to students, faculty, and the Chicago community."
"We hope that the Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition
will become one of classical music's signature honors," said
Northwestern University President Henry S. Bienen. "With
the receipt of nominations of distinguished individuals throughout
the world, we seem well on the way to achieving our goal. The
first recipient of the composition award is a person of widely
recognized achievement, consistent with the standard set by the
recipients of our Nemmers prizes in economics and mathematics."
Adams has been heralded worldwide for a unique style that harnesses
the rhythmic energy of minimalism to the harmonies and orchestral
colors of late Romanticism. He brought contemporary history to
the opera house with his post-modern music theater works "Nixon
in China" (1987) and "The Death of Klinghoffer" (1991),
and has addressed urgent social issues in "I Was Looking
at the Ceiling and then I Saw the Sky," "El Dorado" and "The
Wound-Dresser." He received the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music
for "On the Transmigration of Souls," a composition
commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the
victims of the World Trade Center attacks.
Adams's works have been performed worldwide by great orchestras
and opera companies, and are widely used by choreographers. He
is the recipient of the 1995 Grawemeyer Award for his "Violin
Concerto," and has had a long-term recording relationship
with the Nonesuch label. He is currently composer in residence
at Carnegie Hall.
The anonymous, three-member Nemmers Prize committee that selected
Adams comprised individuals of widely recognized stature in the
international music community.
The Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition is made
possible through a generous gift from the late Erwin E. Nemmers
and Frederic E. Nemmers, who in 1994 enabled the creation of
the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics and the Frederic Esser
Prize in Mathematics, leading awards in those fields.
John Adams Biography
One of America's most admired and frequently performed composers,
John Adams was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1947. After
graduating from Harvard University in 1971, he moved to California,
where he taught and conducted at the San Francisco Conservatory
of Music for 10 years.
Adams's innovative concerts led to his appointment first as
contemporary music adviser to the San Francisco Symphony and
then as the orchestra's composer-in-residence from 1979 to 1985,
the period in which his reputation became established with the
success of such works as "Harmonium" and "Harmonielehre." Recordings
on the New Albion and ECM labels were followed in 1986 by an
exclusive contract with Nonesuch Records, an association that
continues today.
In 1985, Adams's collaboration with poet Alice Goodman and stage
director Peter Sellars resulted in two operas, "Nixon in
China" and "The Death of Klinghoffer," worldwide
performances of which made them among the most performed operas
in recent history. They were followed by two further stage works,
the 1995 songplay "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then
I Saw the Sky," with libretto by June Jordan, and "El
Niño," a multi-lingual retelling of the Nativity
story composed for the celebration of the Millennium and first
performed in Paris in December 2000.
Adams was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Music for his
2002 composition "On the Transmigration of Souls." Commissioned
by the New York Philharmonic, it honored the victims of the World
Trade Center attacks. He has received many other awards, including
the 1994 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for his "Chamber
Symphony" and the 1995 Grawemeyer Award for his "Violin
Concerto."
In April and May 2003, Lincoln Center presented a festival titled "John
Adams: An American Master," the most extensive festival
ever devoted to a living composer at Lincoln Center. Festivals
of his music have been presented recently in London and Rotterdam.
In 2003, a film version of "The Death of Klinghoffer" by
filmmaker Penny Woolcock was released in theaters, on television,
and on DVD. The film, for which the composer conducted the London
Symphony Orchestra, made its American debut at the Sundance Film
Festival.
In autumn 2003, Adams was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic
to compose a work celebrating the opening of Walt Disney Hall,
designed by Frank Gehry. For this occasion, he composed "The
Dharma at Big Sur," a work for electric violin and orchestra
inspired by the California landscape and Jack Kerouac's book "Big
Sur."
Currently composer in residence at Carnegie Hall, Adams is working
on a third opera, "Doctor Atomic," based on the life
of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the scientific and moral crises
surrounding the creation of the world's first atomic bomb in
1945. It will premiere in October 2005 in San Francisco.
Adams, who is the subject of two documentary films, has served
as music director of the Cabrillo Festival, artist in association
with the BBC Symphony and creative chair of the Saint Paul Chamber
Orchestra. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Cambridge
University and honorary membership in Phi Beta Kappa. In April,
he was honored by the governor of California for distinguished
service to the arts in his home state.
Adams regularly conducts programs combining his own works with
composers as diverse as Debussy, Stravinsky, and Ravel to Zappa,
Ives, Reich, Glass, and Ellington. As a guest conductor and director
of music festivals in the U.S. and Europe, he has appeared with
most of the world's major orchestras, including the New York
Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra.
His music is published by Boosey & Hawkes and Associated
Music Publishers.
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