I Am Love, the new film from director Luca Guadagnino, starring Tilda Swinton and featuring the music of John Adams, opened over the weekend in select theaters in New York City and Los Angeles, with more screens across the country to be added this coming weekend.

"From its pianissimo opening sequence to the thundering crescendo of its final moments," says Los Angeles Times writer David Ng, "I Am Love is a movie awash in the music of John Adams."

The film's director, Ng reports, sees Adams's music "as a crucial emotional anchor for the movie." Guadagnino tells the Times: "His music was so powerful and many scenes were written with it in mind."

Describing his first encounter with Adams's work, Guadagnino tells Ng that a friend had brought him a copy of Adams's Naive and Sentimental Music, released on Nonesuch in 2002. "I came home and the second the music came out of the stereo, it was an emotion I will always remember," the director explains. "There was something incredibly new but also familiar and then I became obsessed."

The Times also speaks with the composer about the film and his reaction to seeing his music being featured in such a way, concluding, Ng reports, "that it made excellent use of his compositions."

Read more at latimes.com.

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Adams met with Washington Post staff writer Philip Kennicott for a conversation that was ostensibly about I Am Love, but touched upon any number of subjects. That such wide-ranging conversations should come so freely with the man Kennicott describes as "one this country's most distinguished and most talented artists" is hardly surprising.

"Adams is deeply interested in the broader musical dimensions of culture," Kennicott writes, "how pop music and classical music coexist and sometimes cross-fertilize, how composers need audience feedback, how musical generations succeed one another and how some artists will fight quixotic battles to their dying day, holding true to avant-garde orthodoxy no matter how isolating it is. The story of classical music in America is for Adams a grand narrative that is still unfolding."

When talk turns to a novel Adams is writing, that news, too, meets the Post writer unphased. "Adams isn't just one of this country's greatest composers," says Kennicott, "he is also a fluent and entertaining writer," citing Adams's memoir, Hallelujah Junction, and his blog, Hell Mouth.

Steering the conversation back toward the subject at hand, Kennicott says, "Adams music is beautifully crafted, endlessly engaging and has won over audiences throughout the world."

Read the complete article at washingtonpost.com.