No opera has been dogged by controversy over the last two decades as John Adams's 1991 work The Death of Klinghoffer. That was the case again this weekend at its London premiere.

On Monday, March 26 at 7 pm, Q2 Music welcomes San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas, composer John Adams and the St. Lawrence String Quartet to The Greene Space.

Composer John Adams, looking back at On the Transmigration of Souls, his 2002 piece remembering Sept. 11, expresses satisfaction with the work's success, but also concerns about the public's "orgy of self pity."

John Adams was one of the first major composers to take on the challenge of writing a work to commemorate the events of September 11, 2001. His Pulitzer Prize-winning work On the Transmigration of Souls is something of a sound collage, performed by orchestra and choirs along with pre-recorded ambient sound: we hear a voice reading names of people who were lost in the towers, the choirs singing reminiscences of their family members.

Writing a piece about a major disaster, war or other crisis is one of the bigger challenges a composer may face. In this guide to pieces about September 11, we explore how every composer faced a specific hurdle and how they arrived at a given solution.

Artists have often used their art as a means of making sense of the horrors of war and taking a political stance: from Salvador Dalí's painting Face of War to Kryzstof Penderecki's string orchestra work Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima. On May 12 as part of Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music Festival, the Oregon Symphony takes the stage and presents a program titled Music for a Time of War featuring cornerstone works by John Adams, Charles Ives, Benjamin Britten and Ralph Vaughn Williams.

Earlier this morning it was announced that composers John Adams and John Luther Adams will be collaborating on an opera—the former’s seventh and the latter’s first. Their proposed subject matter? An opera based on the life of Sarah Palin.

U.S. diplomat Winston Lord had a nearly four-decade long relationship with China, including a front-row seat to the historic 1972 meeting between Nixon and Mao, the subject of John Adams’ opera Nixon in China. The opera has its Met premiere on Wednesday.

In advance of the Metropolitan Opera premiere of John Adams' opera Nixon in China Q2 is presenting all four of his operas as well as his one oratorio, El Niño, every night this week at 7 pm.