John Adams grew up in Vermont and New Hampshire, and received his early musical training from his father, with whom he studied clarinet and played in local marching bands. Adams has often noted the tremendous extent to which the exuberant sounds and powerful rhythms of marching bands and community orchestras influenced the character of his music over the course of a career that resembled that of Charles Ives at the end of the last century. In 1971, having graduated from Harvard, where he studied with Leon Kirchner, Adams left New England for California, where he has lived ever since, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Adams taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music for a decade, and from 1978 to 1985 worked closely with the San Francisco Symphony, where conductor Edo de Waart became the first to champion his work.

Adams' first instrumental compositions, — such as Phrygian Gates and China Gates, two pieces for piano written in 1977 and considered to be his Opus One, or Shaker loops for string septet, composed in 1978 — while they never adhered to the strict forms of "classic" minimalism, did feature short phrases used repetitively. In this sense, they are a tribute not only to Reich and Glass, but also Terry Riley, along with certain experimental composers of the 1960s. Even in his most purely minimalist pieces, what makes Adams' work incomparable are the great imagination and inventiveness he brings to his compositions. The long, powerful arcs of their dramatic progressions bend far beyond strict minimalism.

In the 1970s and 80s, Adams' music played a decisive part in the creation and spread of a post-modern current within the contemporary art music tradition. Injecting new life into the thematics and harmonies that were a feature of the neo-romantic movement, he drew on the rhythms of traditional music and the euphoric energy of jazz and rock, creating music that was both infused with the experimental spirit of 1970s California and sought to draw together the many musical influences threading through American culture. The result was a singular style that tirelessly explores different paths toward a language of synthesis. The changing moods and grinding contrasts of his zestful humor and the nostalgic cast of his more elegaic moments are probably best expressed in his symphonic works.

In 1985, he began collaborating with Alice Goodman and Peter Sellars, producing two of the world's most frequently performed operas of the past decades: Nixon In China (1984-1985) and The Death of Klinghoffer (1990-1991). This latter work was adapted for film by Penny Woolcock in 2003. His collaboration with Peter Sellars continued with the "songplay" I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, in 1995; El Niño in 1999-2000, an opera-oratorio whose multilingual libretto is a celebration of the turn of the millenium, and Doctor Atomic in 2005. In 2006, A Flowering Tree, an opera inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute premiered in Vienna. Their collaboration continued with an oratorio titled The Gospel According to the Other Mary, composed in 2012; and Girls of the Golden West, an opera about the Gold Rush, which premiered at the San Francisco Opera in 2017.

John Adams is also a conductor, and has conducted the Houston Symphony, the Toronto Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the New World Symphony, among others.

• 2000: California Governor's Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts
• 2003: Pulitzer Prize in Music for On the Transmigration of Souls
• 2003: 3 Grammies for "Best Classical Recording," "Best Orchestral Performance," and "Best Classical Contemporary Composition" for the 10-CD collection The John Adams Earbox from Nonesuch Records
• 2003: Honorary doctorate from the University of Cambridge
• 2004: Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition
• 2007: Harvard Arts Medal
• 2012: Honorary doctorate from Harvard University
• 2013: Honorary Doctorate from Yale University
• 2015: Honorary Doctorate from the Royal Academy of Music (London)
• 2019: Erasmus Prize