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'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.

Audra McDonald and Dawn Upshaw will take the stage at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles tonight for the Opening Night Gala of the Los Angeles Philarmonic's 2008–09 season, the orchestra's last with conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen at its helm. Audra will sing Sondheim's "There Won't Be Trumpets" and Jule Styne / Sammy Cahn's "10,432 Sheep"; Dawn will perform songs from John Adams's Nixon in China and Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. The eclectic program also includes selections from Stravinsky's The Firebird.

David Simon, executive producer, writer, and creator of HBO's The Wire, will present a lecture at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, this afternoon at 4:10 PM in the school's chapel. The lecture, titled "The Audacity of Despair," is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by Hamilton College's Dean of Faculty and hosted by the school's American Studies program. Simon's most recent work for HBO, the mini-series Generation Kill, tells the story of an embedded reporter in Iraq during the initial US invasion of Baghdad in 2003.

With just over four weeks left until election day in the United States, November 4, a number of Nonesuch Records artists will be participating in some very special campaign events. This Monday, k.d. lang will perform at an intimate, in-home fund-raising concert for Obama in New York City with Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, Joseph Biden, and renowned chef Alice Waters. The following evening in New York, composer Ricky Ian Gordon and Tony Award–winning actress Victoria Clark perform at a stellar Obama/Biden fund-raiser at the home of television producer Tom Fontana. On October 10, Brad Mehldau and Chris Thile perform works by Bach as well as their own works at an Obama benefit concert at New York's Poisson Rouge.

The Glass Box, the 10-CD Nonesuch retrospective covering 40 years of the works of Philip Glass, hits stores today, just one day after the New York City Opera announced that it has commissioned the composer to create a new opera on the life of another iconic American figure, Walt Disney. The new work for City Opera will be Glass's 24th opera and will honor his 75th birthday when it premieres in 2012–2013. In the nearer future, City Opera has scheduled Glass's Einstein on the Beach for 2009–2010; it will be the company's first production in its newly refurbished home at Lincoln Center.

Ry Cooder, fresh off his recent performance at the San Jose Mariachi Festival, makes two more rare live appearance this Thursday and Friday when he reconnects with former bandmates Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner for two concerts at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall to benefit the Richard deLone Special Housing Fund. The San Jose Mercury News talks with Ry about this atypically packed performance schedule, part of "an explosion of productivity" that includes the recent release of his I, Flathead and the new Buena Vista Social Club at Carnegie Hall album.

Wilco is encouraging everyone who is eligible to vote in this November's all-important US Presidential election to register now and head out to the polls on Tuesday, November 4. For anyone who pledge to do so, the band is offering a free download of a beautiful, live rendition of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," recorded in concert with Fleet Foxes this summer. Wilco has also signed on to perform this October at the 22nd annual Bridge School benefit concert organized by Neil Young, with whom Wilco will tour this winter.

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.