"The winner of five Grammy Awards and the Pulitzer Prize for Music, John Adams is one of America's greatest and most performed living composers," BBC Radio 4's This Cultural Life host John Wilson says of his guest on the show. They talk about Adams' life, work, and the influence of Leonard Bernstein, Duke Ellington, Steve Reich, Charles Dickens, the state of California, and more. You can hear their conversation via Spotify and Apple Music here:

This first recording of John Adams’ 2017 opera, Girls of the Golden West, his eighth music theater work to be released by Nonesuch, is out now It tells the story of the California Gold Rush not through familiar time-worn myth, but in the words and deeds of real people. Longtime Adams collaborator Peter Sellars drew from original sources from the era—letters, journals, newspaper articles, and familiar song lyrics—to create the libretto. The composer leads the LA Phil in this recording made in Disney Hall, with the Los Angeles Master Chorale led by Grant Gershon and a cast featuring Davóne Tines, Julia Bullock, Paul Appleby, Hye Jung Lee, Elliot Madore, Daniela Mack, and Ryan McKinny.

The Metropolitan Opera premiere performances of Adams’ Nativity opera-oratorio El Niño, conducted by Marin Alsop and starring Bullock and Tines, conclude in New York City this Friday. “It was almost as inspiring to see as it was to hear Adams’s marvelous work on the Met’s stage,” says the New York Times in its Critic's Pick review of the production. The premiere recording of El Niño, featuring Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Dawn Upshaw, and Willard White, was released on Nonesuch in 2001.