John Adams

John Wilson talks to the Australian born opera singer Danielle de Niese. A soprano renowned for her vibrant stage presence, she made her professional operatic debut with the Los Angeles Opera at the age of 15 and, and four years later she became one of the youngest singers to per ...  Show more

Award-winning photographer Sir Don McCullin talks to John Wilson about his cultural influences and formative experiences. He started out in the late 1950s documenting the working-class lives in the north London neighbourhood in which he had grown up. Employed by the Observer news ...  Show more

Norman Lebrecht talks to the American composer and conductor John Adams in the week that he conducts his opera Nixon in China at the BBC Proms. Adams who was born in Massachusetts is one of the most celebrated composers alive. Many of his pieces are in the repertory, including hi ...  Show more

Errollyn Wallen is one of the world’s most performed living composers. Her work, which includes 22 operas, orchestral, chamber and vocal works, was played at the opening ceremony of the Paralympic Games in 2012 and at Queen Elizabeth II’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees. She was the ...  Show more

Ludwig Van Beethoven, like his precursor and possible acquaintance Mozart, is one of the most famous figures in Western musical history. With his wild hair and furrowed brow, his was a genius marked not by flamboyance and flare, but dark, bombastic gravity. Like Mozart, though, h ...  Show more

The commission for a new Clarinet Concerto from the great American composer Aaron Copland came from a rather unlikely source: Benny Goodman, the man known as the King of Swing. Goodman was one of the most famous and important jazz musicians of all time, but in the late 1940s, ...