About
photo by Bailey Kobelin
Composer, performer, improvisor, and music teacher.
Adam Zuckerman (b. 1992, Los Angeles, CA) is a musician working with acoustic, electronic, and environmental materials in the creation of scores, recordings, performances, and installations. His work often experiments with notation, form, and flexible performance situations, and is motivated by an interest in the way music shapes our experience of time and memory; in the conditions and perceptual limits of change and difference; in the subtle shifts in the atmosphere of particular performance situations; and in the incidental sounds and experiences of everyday life. Adam considers music to be a reiteration of the creative impulses and processes of nature, a coalescence of sound from the continuously transforming sonic fabric of a world always full of vibration. His music attempts to hear some aspect of this world and to hold open an immersive space for listening, reflection, and imagination.
Adam's work has been performed and/or presented internationally by ensembles, labels, and organizations such as 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), NCTMMRN, Nueni Recs, Quartetto Maurice, Unwrinkled Ear Concert Series, wasteLAnd Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and others.
Recent projects include: STARPERMEABLE, a studio album out on Nueni Records ; and The eternal oak., a choreographed performance piece for solo performer that was premiered at 2220 Arts + Archives. Adam also organizes concerts around Los Angeles. including a new music series in outdoor public spaces and a concert series in collaboration with a local after-school music program which serves to bridge the generational gap between professional musicians and elementary, middle, and high school musicians.
In addition to collaborations with other musicians, Adam enjoys working with visual artists, writers, filmmakers, and choreographers - most recently having composed and recorded the music for Lupines Will Abound, a film by Cody Edison which through poetic documentation explores the impact of fires on the environment of Southern California. Adam is also part of the team at Soap Ear, a quarterly online journal dedicated to sound art, and he is the resident copy-writer for Dinzu Artefacts.
Adam has extensive experience teaching music. He has taught composition, theory, piano, guitar, and violin to students of all ages and skill levels for nearly a decade. Most recently, he was on faculty at the Santa Monica Conservatory of Music, where he initiated a theory/composition class for middle and high school students. He has also worked at public elementary and middle schools for their after-school music programs.
Adam holds a B.M. in music composition and a B.A. in Ancient Greek from the Bard College and Conservatory of Music, and an M.F.A. in music composition and experimental sound practices from California Institute of the Arts. Adam also studied for two years at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst (KUG) in Graz, Austria. In the fall of 2023 Adam will begin the PhD program in composition at the University of California San Diego.
To contact me regarding commissions, performances, collaborations, music lessons, copy-writing/editing, or anything else, please visit the Contact page.