Composer John Adams is today's guest on Soundcheck, the daily music show from New York NPR member station WNYC. Adams will talk with the show's host, John Schaefer, about the many high-profile recent and ongoing performances of his works, making him what Q2 called "this summer's hottest composer." Tune in to Soundcheck today at 2 PM ET on 93.9 FM in New York City and streaming live online at wnyc.org.

John Adams is in New York City for the Lincoln Center Festival's Bruckner (R)evolution series at Avery Fisher Hall, in which the Cleveland Orchestra and its Music Director Franz Welser-Möst have paired Adams's orchestral works with four of Anton Bruckner's symphonies, what the New York Times calls an "audacious" coupling. The series began last night, with a performance of Adams's Guide to Strange Places and Bruckner's Fifth Symphony, and continues tonight, when the orchestra performs Bruckner's Symphony No. 7 and is joined by violinist Leila Josefowicz in Adams's Violin Concerto. The final concert takes place this Sunday and includes what the New Yorker calls two "two mercurial and fascinating works": Doctor Atomic Symphony and Bruckner's final, unfinished symphony, No. 9.

The Wall Street Journal's Barrymore Laurence Scherer, in a preview of the series, calls Adams "one of America's supreme composers." Scherer, who spoke with Adams and Welser-Möst for the article, writes of the ties between Bruckner and Adams: "Certainly spatial and spiritual qualities seem to join both composers. Even in Mr. Adams's densest orchestral writing, with its textures of frantic repetitive motifs, there is frequently a palpable spatial sensibility." Read the article at wsj.com.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer's Zachary Lewis, reporting from last night's opening concert, says the Bruckner was well-received. What's more, "Hearty applause also followed Adams' Guide to Strange Places, the first work on the program and a representative of the Minimalist movement Welser-Most believes Bruckner anticipated. But the audience leapt to its feet when Adams himself appeared on stage with the conductor."

In this video from Lincoln Center, John Adams sits with Welser-Möst to discuss his musical DNA, mixing Beethoven, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Bruckner with his "American genotype" of jazz and rock:

To pick up a copy of any of the albums in the John Adams's Nonesuch catalog, head to the Nonesuch Store, where CD orders include high-quality, 320 kbps MP3s of the album at checkout.