John Adams made his Met debut Monday night with the opening of the new production of his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic. "This score continues to impress me as Mr. Adams’s most complex and masterly music," exclaims the New York Times's Anthony Tomassini. "Whole stretches of the orchestral writing tremble with grainy colors, misty sonorities and textural density." The Associated Press calls it an "intense and fascinating" work, in which "Adams has created a score filled with color, syncopation and lush interludes." Newsweek calls the production "stunning," the score "lyrical, romantic, Wagnerian by turns." Also, Bloomberg calls the composer's newest opera, A Flowering Tree, "Adams's most ravishing creation to date," and Slate finds his new memoir "gripping."

John Adams makes his Met Opera debut tonight with the New York premiere of his opera Doctor Atomic. The New Yorker calls it "a striking example of the new Met’s range." New York Philharmonic Music Director Designate Alan Gilbert conducts, in his company debut. Gerald Finley reprises his role as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, and tells the New York Times: "The strength of Doctor Atomic is the layered subtext. Each character has many agendas to get through. It’s very refreshing to reveal aspects that haven’t been seen." Director Penny Woolcock tells The Financial Times: "John's music grows out of the finest lyrical tradition of operatic composition but it is part of the 20th and 21st centuries ... I can hear bits of Miles Davis and Jimi Hendrix and the rhythms of today."

"John Adams is the voice of America," asserts Los Angeles Times music critic Mark Swed in his review of Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction. "His instrumental music," Swed explains, "and particularly that for the orchestra, conveys the American experience broadly." The review goes on to examine the biography and works Adams addresses in the memoir, including his operas Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, which Swed calls "an essential part of the American discussion." The book, he concludes, "offers the voice of America straight from the horse's mouth, and to read something so intelligent, reasoned and caring sure feels good these days."

John Adams's new memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is an "absorbing book," says the New York Times, "which at times reads like a quest narrative that travels through the whole landscape of 20th-century music." Adams has created a "particularly American" sound, reads the review. "His music is both lush and austere, grand and precise. To make an analogy to two poets whose work he has set to music, it’s Walt Whitman on the one hand and Emily Dickinson on the other." The "soundtrack" to the book is available in the companion Nonesuch retrospective, also available now.

Tonight at the 92nd Street Y in New York City: The Composer's Voice: John Adams. John Adams will talk with Juilliard dean Ara Guzelimian about his career; his opera Doctor Atomic, which receives its New York premiere at the Met next week; and his new memoir, Hallelujah Junction, just published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The program also features "musical illustrations" by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, baritone Jordan Shanahan, and pianist Linda Hall.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has announced this year's recipients of its annual fellowship, often referred to as the "Genius" grant. Dawn Upshaw was named a Fellow last year. Among this year's recipients are violinist Leila Josefowicz, who performs John Adams's Road Movies on the piece's 2004 Nonesuch recording; Walter Kitundu, Kronos Quartet's instrument builder in residence; writer Alex Ross, who will interview Upshaw at the upcoming New Yorker Festival; and SFJAZZ Collective saxophonist Miguel Zenón, who appears on the group's two Nonesuch albums.

John Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, receives its first recording with the Nonesuch release out Tuesday, followed by Hallelujah Junction, a two-CD Adams retrospective and memoirs of the same name. "Adams's sound-world is still expanding," writes The New Statesman. "In this, the composer's seventh decade, his musical fertility still springs anew." Pitchfork gives A Flowering Tree an 8.4, asserting: "There are few living American composers writing works as universal and relevant as John Adams—and that deserves everybody's attention." The Telegraph, in its review of the forthcoming book, declares: "A musician's memoir would probably not be your first choice for light reading, but make an exception for Hallelujah Junction."

"Adams's searingly introspective autobiography reveals the workings of a brilliant musical mind responsible for some of contemporary America's most inventive and original music." So says Publishers Weekly in its recommendation of John Adams's forthcoming memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life. The Philadelphia Inquirer asserts that Adams's newest opera, The Flowering Tree, due out on Nonesuch this month, "commands attention musically and dramatically as handily as Verdi," part of minimalism's having "found a range of expression undreamed-of 30 years ago."

John Adams's long-awaited memoir, Hallelujah Junction: Composing an American Life, is set for release in early October, and this week, The New Yorker has published an excerpt from the book in the article "Sonic Youth: A Composer Finds His Voice." In the magazine's podcast, John discusses the topic, from his early years as a composer in San Francisco through his 1981 breakout piece, Harmonium. In conjunction with the book's launch, Nonesuch will release a two-disc retrospective of the same name featuring some of his best-known works. Adams's latest opera, A Flowering Tree, is available for pre-order now.

Congratulations to John Adams, who has been named a winner of the 2008 Opera News Award. The New York Philharmonic's music director designate, Alan Gilbert, will present the composer with the award in a ceremony on November 16 in New York City; Gilbert will lead the Metropolitan Opera's production of Adams's Doctor Atomic in October. This year's other award recipients are sopranos Natalie Dessay and Renée Fleming, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, and baritone Sherrill Milnes.

Works by John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Frederic Rzewski, Bill Frisell, John Zorn, John Cage meet the music of Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Beethoven at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's second annual 8 Days in June music festival, which kicks off tonight. It's a multidisciplinary affair aiming to examine the relationship between music and the explosive changes of the 20th and 21st centuries and harness the "The Power of Change."

When John Adams's opera Doctor Atomic premiered at the San Francisco Opera in October 2005, the New York Times' Anthony Tommasini declared that it "must surely be considered the musical event of the year in America." Documentary filmmaker Jon Else was there when the curtain went up, as he had been throughout the previous year, capturing the efforts of the composer and his longtime collaborator, director/librettist Peter Sellars, to tell, through opera, the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the start of the nuclear age. Times film critic Stephen Holden calls the resulting documentary, Wonders Are Many, "enthralling." The film makes its way from successful festival runs to its theatrical debut, opening in NYC and LA this afternoon. Doctor Atomic makes its Metropolitan Opera debut in this October.