John Coolidge Adams was born on February 15, 1947 in Worcester, MA. Both of his parents were musicians, and Adams recalled growing up in a household that listened to all kinds of music; a place where “Benny Goodman and Mozart were not separated (Schwartz 170).” At age eight, his father Carl began teaching him the clarinet and he would eventually write his first composition by the age of eleven. His family settled in East Concord, NH - a rural place which Robert Schwartz called “an archetypal New England village with a town common, white-steepled churches, and 300 people” - where he would remain until college (172). Despite living in the country, Adams was afforded many opportunities to perform (including with his father in the Concord
