About

Composer, performer, and music teacher.

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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 recognition. Such thresholds engage sound and form in its capacity to shape foundational experiences: of time, memory, and the emergence of cognition; 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, if also an always withdrawing, space – for listening, reflection, and imagination.​

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Adam's work has been performed and/or presented by musicians, labels, 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, NCTMMRN, Nueni Recs, Peter Ko, Project [Blank], Quartetto Maurice, San Diego New Music, Unwrinkled Ear Concert Series, wasteLAnd Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and others.

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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. Other recent projects include: The eternal oak., a staged solo performance piece premiered at 2220 Arts + Archives ; 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.

 

Before moving to San Diego to pursue a PhD, 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 concerts in collaboration with a local after-school music conservatory. The latter sought to bridge professional musicians and elementary, middle, and high school musicians.

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In addition to collaborations with other musicians, Adam has worked with artists outside of music, including having composed and recorded the music for Lupines Will Abound, a film by Cody Edison which, through a poetic documentary style, explores the impact of fires on the environment of Southern California. Adam has also been 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.

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As a teacher, Adam has taught composition, theory, piano, guitar, and violin to students of all ages and skill levels for over a decade. Until recently, 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 for their after-school music programs. Currently, Adam works as a TA at the University of California San Diego, where he teaches and leads discussion sections for a wide range of undergraduate music courses.

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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. He also has 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 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. Adam is currently a PhD student in composition at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where his principal teachers/advisors are Michelle Lou, Ti McCormack, and Charles Curtis.

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For inquiries about commissions, performances, collaborations, music lessons, copy-writing/editing, or anything else, please visit the Contact page.

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