photo by Bailey Kobelin
Composer, performer, and music teacher.
Adam is a composer and instrumentalist working with acoustic and electronic sounds. His music often inhabits a gradually unfolding sound world at the threshold of perception and cognition, where such thresholds engage sound and form in its capacity to shape foundational experiences: of time and memory; of liminal degrees marking change, difference, and transformation; of the distillations and dissolutions of resonance; of proximities of presence and absence; of the intangible yet very real perceptual shifts that measure the atmosphere of a space. In this way, his music strives to activate a heightened perceptual attunement to the world and to sense as such. Framing and listening attentively to some aspect of this world, his music also seeks to hold open an immersive space, if also an always withdrawing space – for listening, reflection, and imagination.
Adam's music has been performed and/or presented by musicians and organizations such as Amir Norouz Nasseri, Arts Letters & Numbers, Blanton Museum of Art, Coaxial Arts, Distat Terra Festival, Ensemble Dal Niente, Escuta Aqui Festival, Facere Collective, High Desert Soundings, L.A. Electroacoustic Ensemble (LAEE), Marco Fusi, Peter Ko, Project [Blank], Quartetto Maurice, San Diego New Music, Unwrinkled Ear Concert Series, wasteLAnd Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and others.
Adam has released two albums: STARPERMEABLE, with Nueni Records ; and The Hand, The Grid, And The Red Breeze, with NCTMMRN. His piece for piano, The receding line in a Bruegel sky, was included in House On Fire's debut album.
Adam holds a BM in music composition and a BA in Ancient Greek from the Bard College and Conservatory of music; and an MFA in music composition and experimental sound practices from California Institute of The Arts. Adam is currently a PhD student in composition at the University of California, San Diego.
Additional information:
Recent projects include: shade , illumination, a solo cello piece commissioned by cellist Peter Ko with the support of San Diego New Music.; and braid. [ worldburrow ], a piece for viola and electronics premiered by Marco Fusi. Forthcoming projects include an evening-length piece for violin and electronics for violinist Amir Norouz Nasseri.
Adam was active in the independent music scene in Los Angeles, where he also organized and curated several concert series, including concerts in outdoor public spaces and at venues such as 2220 Arts + Archives and Coaxial Arts,.
Adam has worked with artists outside of music, including having composed and recorded the music for Lupines Will Abound, a film by Cody Edison. Adam was part of the team at Soap Ear, a quarterly online journal dedicated to sound art, as well as the record label Dinzu Artefacts, for which he regularly worked as a copy-writer until 2024.
As a teacher, Adam has taught composition, theory, piano, guitar, and violin to students of all ages for over a decade. Until 2023, he was on faculty at the Santa Monica Conservatory of Music, where he created and taught a theory/composition class for middle and high school students. He has also worked at public elementary and middle schools. Currently, Adam works as a TA at the University of California San Diego, where he teaches and leads discussion sections for a wide variety of undergraduate music courses.
Adam has a BM in music composition and a BA in Ancient Greek from the Bard College and Conservatory of Music. At Bard, Adam studied with Joan Tower, George Tsontakis, and Kyle Gann. Following Bard, Adam spent two years at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (KUG) in Graz, Austria, where he worked with Klaus Lang, but left without completing the degree. In 2021, he received an MFA in music composition and experimental sound practices from California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with Michael Pisaro and Tim Feeney. Adam is currently a PhD student in composition at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where his principal teachers are Michelle Lou and Ti McCormack.
For inquiries about commissions, performances, collaborations, music lessons, copy-writing/editing, or anything else, please visit the Contact page.