Tonight marks the opening of The Juilliard School's annual FOCUS! festival, with a concert by the New Juilliard Ensemble, led by festival director Joel Sachs, featuring John Adams's 2007 piece Son of Chamber Symphony. Adams's inclusion in this concert and throughout the festival proceedings reflects its theme this year, California: A Century of New Music.

Adams will join fellow California composers Pamela Z, Pauline Oliveros, Gabriela Lena Frank, and Morton Subotnick this Tuesday, January 27, at 7 PM, at the school's Peter Jay Sharp Theater, for a special panel discussion moderated by Sachs. The discussion precedes a concert of music that includes the New York premiere of works by Frank, Subotnick, and Terry Riley.

A major highlight of the festival is the world premiere of Adams’s String Quartet by the St. Lawrence String Quartet on Thursday, January 29. This two-movement piece, written for the SLSQ, is Adams’s second full-length work for string quartet and contrasts with its predecessor, John’s Book of Alleged Dances, which Kronos Quartet premiered in 1994, in that it does not include electronics. The concert begins at 8 PM in the school's Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Prior to the concert, at 6 PM, the composer will sit down for a public conversation with Robert Marx in the school's Morse Hall.

Another highlight of the festival will be its culminating event: a semi-staged production of Adams's groundbreaking 1990 opera, The Death of Klinghoffer. The composer will conduct the Juilliard Opera Center in this special performance in Peter Sharp Theater on January 31, beginning at 8 PM.

For a complete calendar of events, visit juilliard.edu. There's also more on the festival in the Juilliard Journal, at juilliard.edu/journal, including an overview of California's musical history by the festival's director, Joel Sachs, and a feature by Lisa B. Robinson on John Adams, focusing on The Death of Klinghoffer.