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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Private Passions Podcast

Private Passions

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: John Adams

16/05/2010

John Adams

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, John Adams

Michael Berkeley's guest is American composer John Adams.

Michael Berkeley's guest is composer John Adams, whose musical choices include Sousa, Duke Ellington and the Beach Boys, as well as Beethoven, Schubert, Hagen, Wagner and Debussy.

US composer John Adams talks to Michael Berkeley about the music that makes him tick.
The Pulitzer-Prize-winning American composer John Adams is one of the world's most successful contemporary composers. His best-known works, often on contemporary or controversial subject-matter, include the operas 'Nixon in China', based on Richard Nixon's epoch-making 1972 meeting with the Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung; 'The Death of Klinghoffer', about the terrorist hijacking of the cruise liner Achille Lauro and the murder of an elderly American passenger; and Doctor Atomic (2005), which deals with Robert Oppenheimer and the building of the first US atomic bomb. His 2002 choral piece 'On the Transmigration of Souls' commemorates the victims of the 9/11 attacks; while his minimalist orchestral and ensemble works, such as 'Shaker Loops', 'The Chairman Dances' and 'A Short Ride in a Fast Machine' have entered the contemporary repertoire and earned him a wide international audience.

His own musical tastes encompass popular American masterpieces such as Sousa's 'The Stars and Stripes Forever', Duke Ellington's 'The Tattooed Bride' and the Beach Boys' 'Good Vibrations' as well as a series of extraordinary works written towards the end of composers' lives: a late Beethoven string quartet; Schubert's last great piano sonata; Hagen's monologue from Act One of Wagner's opera 'Gotterdammerung', and Debussy's elusive ballet score 'Jeux'.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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