Premiered 19 years ago, Harmonium served notice that America would be able to claim another major composer as its own before history closed the books on the 20th century. Only ten years later, at the debut of The Death of Klinghoffer, John Adams was already a figure of international renown, having been commissioned for new pieces by a formidable number of performing arts institutions throughout the world. These two works - both written to texts, and numbering among the composer's deepest and most emotionally affecting compositions - are bookends to a decade of meteoric ascendence for this Bay Area figure.