Adam Roberts
Adam Roberts writes viscerally compelling music with a vivid array of sonic resources. Roberts’ music has been performed by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, Earplay, andPlay, Transient Canvas, Ums ‘n Jip, Fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, violist Garth Knox, Guerilla Opera, and at festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Tanglewood, the Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyons), and the 2009 ISCM World Music Days (Sweden).
Roberts is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Fromm Foundation Commission, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Bernard Rogers Prize (Eastman), the New York Bohemians Prize (Harvard), the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Prize from the Orléans Piano Competition, the Earplay Donald Aird Award, the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Fellowship from the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, the Blodgett Prize (Harvard), and other awards. Commissions have come from the Callithumpian Consort, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, pianist Nolan Pearson, the Tanglewood Music Center, Guerilla Opera, and others.
Roberts’ music has been called “a powerful success,” “arresting,” and “amazingly lush,” (the Boston Musical Intelligencer), “an attractive mix of the familiar and exotic,” and “otherworldly” (Boston Classical Review), and “invigorating” with a “persistent melodic urge” (American Academy of Arts and Letters citation).
Roberts holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (B.M.) and Harvard University (Ph.D), having studied with David Liptak, Augusta Read Thomas, Martin Bresnick, Steven Stucky, Bernard Rands, Julian Anderson, and Chaya Czernowin. Roberts has taught at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Istanbul Technical University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Music, and the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music. He is currently Associate Professor of Composition at Kent State University.