An Excerpt From

The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer

By Thomas May

In 1997, the year John Adams turned fifty, it was already tempting to call him America's leading composer. The country, of course, is too big and diverse for any such label. But four years ago, this much was incontestable: There was no serious American composer who could consistently get more attention or press; none who could generate the same eager anticipation for a major work at home or abroad; none as much in demand or performed or recorded, none who commanded the same degree of respect from both fellow musicians and general audiences.

Four years hence, we still can't claim that Adams is America's most important composer--Elliot Carter, at ninety-two, is more dazzling than ever; the reputation of Lou Harrison, eighty-three, is finally on the rise; and the profound influence of Philip Glass and Steve Reich has not lessened. But since turning fifty, Adams has produced three masterworks, each grander and greater than the last, that assure his place in history. In a recent profile in the New Yorker, the critic Alex Ross concluded, after interviewing Adams, that he had "just spent the morning with a man who was never going to die."

--From the essay "On Top, but Ever the Risk-Taker" by Mark Swed, Los Angeles Times, January 28, 2001