John Adams

Composer

Expert

John Adams is an American composer of contemporary classical music. After graduating from Harvard in 1972, Adams moved to California, where his compositions began to attract attention. Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, Adams and his works grew in popularity and prominence.

One of his best-known works is Doctor Atomic, which premiered in 2005. Doctor Atomic focuses on the scientists, primarily J. Robert Oppenheimer, at the Los Alamos Laboratory in the weeks leading up to the Trinity Test.

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