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Adams visits Guildhall

John Adams, one of America’s most admired composers, visited the Guildhall School of Music & Drama on Monday 22 October to work with students and take part in a public discussion about his music. The composer, who was in London for 60^th birthday celebration concerts, spent the morning coaching senior musicians from the School before they performed the works during an afternoon event open to the public.

During the event, Anna-Liisa Bezrodny, violin, and Dorine Diemer, piano, performed Adams’s Road Movies, and Eliza McCarthy played the solo piano work Phrygian Gates, a performance which Adams described as ‘astonishing’. Adams was interviewed by fellow composer Julian Anderson, who recently left Harvard to join the Guildhall School’s composition department as Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Composition.

The Guildhall School has regularly hosted visits from contemporary composers in recent years, including Steve Reich, Sofia Gubaidulina, Elliott Carter, and James MacMillan. It continues its association with the BBC Symphony Orchestra’s Composer Weekend this January with performances of the music of British composer Judith Weir.