John Adams, one of the most revered living classical composers, has claimed that he is blacklisted in his native US and is being followed by the security services.
The 61-year-old musician has accused the US of being in the grip of a political and moral panic and has complained that he is now grilled by airport immigration officers whenever he flies home because of his controversial reputation.
Adams made his name 20 years ago with his opera Nixon in China. Although it is now regarded as a landmark in modern music, the opera made headlines when it opened because it was heavily critical of former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger. Then the content of The Death of Klinghoffer, Adams’ 1991 opera about the Palestinian Liberation Front’s 1985 hijacking a cruise ship provoked a storm of protest for its treatment of the murder of a disabled Jewish passenger.
Interviewed on BBC Radio 3’s Music Matters on Saturday, Adams said he was now “blacklisted.”
“I can’t check in at the airport now without my ID being taken and being grilled. You know, I’m on a homeland security list, probably because of having written The Death of Klinghoffer, so I’m perfectly aware that I, like many artists and many thoughtful people in the country, am being followed,” he said.
The suggestion that Adams, who received a Pulitzer Prize for the choral work he wrote to commemorate the victims of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, does not feel welcome in his own country will send shock waves through the musical world. The impact of his remarks will be amplified by the fact that his 2005 opera Doctor Atomic has its New York premiere tomorrow.
During the interview, presenter Petroc Trelawny asked Adams if he felt that the US was living through an age of paranoia that resembled the McCarthy era of the 1950s.
“Well it is, and of course Congress has continued to sign off on these Patriot Acts that continue to clip the wings of human rights,” said Adams, adding that poets, novelists and musicians with left-wing leanings are often watched.
“I’m sure the FBI had a large file on him. So we artists assume that we are being followed,” he said.
Adams believes that the Republican administration manipulated the memory of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks.
“9/11 was a very glamorous event,” he said. “I’m using the term in a very ironic sense — 3,000 people being killed; it’s a terrible tragedy, but in the scale of human tragedy it’s very small.”
“I think Americans went into what the novelist Philip Roth called ‘an orgy of narcissism’ as a result of 9/11 — we kept replaying those images and kept re-reminding ourselves of what an indignation and how horrible and terrible that event was. And then, of course, we struck out by invading the wrong country,” he said.
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