MEDIA CONTACT: Wendy Leopold at 847-491-4890 or w-leopold@northwestern.edu

June 2, 2004

John Adams Awarded Nemmers Music Prize

John Adams

EVANSTON, Ill. --- The Northwestern University School of Music has announced that John Adams is the inaugural winner of the $100,000 Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition. The biennial award honors classical music composers of outstanding achievement.

Adams was cited by the selection committee for "his fusing of a wide range of styles into a voice entirely new and distinctive, and for his connection to and reflection of the world around us." As winner of the Nemmers Prize, he will serve a residency at Northwestern University and have one of his works performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in its 2005-2006 season.

“I am tremendously honored to be selected as the first composer to receive the Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition,” said Adams. “It comes as both a surprise and a delight to know that my music is so highly regarded. I look forward to my residency at the Northwestern School of Music. Spending significant time with students is something I have missed very much in recent years.”

“John Adams is a giant in the field of composition,” said School of Music Dean Toni-Marie Montgomery. “As one of the most performed living American composers, it is clear that he has captured the imagination of both musicians and audiences. His presence on our campus will be of great interest and benefit to students, faculty, and the Chicago community.”

“We hope that the Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition will become one of classical music's signature honors,” said University President Henry S. Bienen. “With the receipt of nominations of distinguished individuals throughout the world, we seem well on the way to achieving our goal. The first recipient of the composition award is a person of widely recognized achievement, consistent with the standard set by the distinguished recipients of our Nemmers prizes in economics and mathematics.”

Adams has been heralded worldwide for a unique style that harnesses the rhythmic energy of minimalism to the harmonies and orchestral colors of late Romanticism. He brought contemporary history to the opera house with his post-modern music theater works “Nixon in China” (1987) and “The Death of Klinghoffer" (1991), and has addressed urgent social issues in “I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky," “El Dorado” and “The Wound-Dresser.”

Adams was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize in Music for “On the Transmigration of Souls,” a composition commissioned by the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the victims of the World Trade Center attacks.

His works have been performed worldwide by great orchestras and opera companies, and are widely used by choreographers. He is the recipient of the 1995 Grawemeyer Award for his “Violin Concerto,” and has had a long-term recording relationship with the Nonesuch label.

The three-member Nemmers Prize committee that selected Adams was comprised of individuals of widely recognized stature in the international music community.

The Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Musical Composition is made possible through a generous gift from the late Erwin E. Nemmers and Frederic E. Nemmers, who in 1994 enabled the creation of the Erwin Plein Nemmers Prize in Economics and the Frederic Esser Nemmers Prize in Mathematics, leading awards in those fields.