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Some of Adams's compositions are an amalgamation of different styles.

One example is Grand Pianola Music ( 1981 – 82 ), a humorous piece that purposely draws its content from musical cliches.

In The Dharma at Big Sur, Adam's draws from literary texts such as Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Henry Miller to illustrate the California landscape.

Adams professes his love of other genres other than classical music ; his parents were jazz musicians, and he has also listened to rock music, albeit only passively.

Adams once claimed that originality wasn't an urgent concern for him the way it was necessary for the minimalists, and compared his position to that of Gustav Mahler, J. S. Bach, and Johannes Brahms, who " were standing at the end of an era and were embracing all of the evolutions that occurred over the previous thirty to fifty years.