Silverman, Adam

Adam Silverman

Biography

Born: 1973

Country: U.S.A., Atlanta, GA

Studies: Tulane University, University of Miami, The Vienna Musikhochshule, The Yale School of Music

Teachers:

Website: http://www.adambsilverman.com/

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Adam Silverman (born 1973 in Atlanta, GA) is a composer who lives in Swarthmore, PA. He teaches music composition, theory, songwriting and orchestration as Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at West Chester University and works actively creating new compositions that are performed on concerts worldwide.

Silverman's compositions feature a broad variety of instrumental and vocal settings, and his most frequently performed works have been for percussion ensemble, wind ensemble, and cello, including many compositions for accompanied and unaccompanied solo cello, and original works and arrangements for cello choirs. He has composed three concertos since 2011: one for saxophone and wind ensemble, one for marimba and wind ensemble, and a double concerto for violin, cello and orchestra.

As a youth, Silverman began his musical training as a pianist and taught himself to play guitar. By age 16, he was writing original songs and performing in local bars where, were he not in the band, he would have been refused entry as an underage patron. At college, he began to study classical music and composed his first works, studying at Tulane University, the University of Miami, The Vienna Musikhochshule, and earning graduate degrees at The Yale School of Music. He continued his training as a composer through participation at summer music festivals including Tanglewood, where he received the prestigious ASCAP-Leonard Bernstein Fellowship.

Silverman began his career in the early '00s as a founder of the Minimum Security Composers Collective, a group of four entrepreneurial composers who created new works and produced concerts in collaboration with leading ensembles. Their evening-length production for sextet Eighth Blackbird was featured on tour across America, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, and other prominent venues. At this time, Silverman also began composing music for many of America's leading ensembles: Sturm for The Amelia Piano Trio, Kicking and Screaming for The Albany Symphony Chamber Orchestra, Ricochet for Strata and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Corrie Q's Jigs and Reels (String Quartet No. 3) for the Corigliano Quartet, and many others.

Inspired by an exhibit on the children of the Holocaust at the Yad V'Shem Museum in Jerusalem, Silverman composed the opera Korczak's Orphans in collaboration with poet Susan Gubernat. This grand opera for a large cast of soloists, orchestra and children's choir, centers around the tragic heroism of a Jewish author and orphanage director in World War II Poland. It has been performed in staged and concert-workshops by New York City Opera, Real Time Opera, The Atlanta Young Singers, and The Brooklyn Opera Company. Silverman's second opera, Griselda e il Marchese di Saluzzo, is an Italian-language operatic "short" based on a tale from Boccaccio's The Decameron; scored for just seven musicians, four soloists and a small women's choir, it was composed for International Opera Theater, and was performed in 2010 and 2011 in Philadelphia, in Pieve, Italy, and in Saluzzo, Italy - the town in which Griselda's story was set in Boccaccio's 14th century novella.

Silverman's dramatic music extends beyond opera. In collaboration with In Parenthesis Theater, he composed music for Le Colonel des Zouaves (2005), a Dadaist theater piece by French dramatist Olivier Cadiot, set for solo actor and men's chorus.

Two monograph recordings of Silverman's music are available: one of chamber compositions (2009, New Focus Recordings) and one of percussion music (2015, Calabaza Records). Individual compositions of his have also appeared on CDs by the Prism Saxophone Quartet, cellist Amy Sue Barston, The Florida State University Percussion Ensemble, and others, all of which are widely available online.

Silverman's musings on music theory and pedagogy can be found online at http://musictheoryprof.com.

Works for Percussion

Percussion Solo and Ensemble

Carbon Paper & Nitrogen Ink (Perc Ens.) - Marimba; Percussion Ensemble
The Cruel Waters - Percussion Trio (Marimba Trio) or Percussion Quartet (Marimba Quartet)
Gasoline Rainbow - Percussion Octet
Lightning Round - Marimba
Naked And On Fire - Percussion Sextet
Paper Covers Rock - Percussion Duet
Quick Blood - Percussion Quartet
Repercussion - Xylophone
Sparklefrog - Percussion Octet
Spiderweb Lead - Percussion Quartet - Vibraphone; Marimba; Steel Drum; Hand Drum or Tablas
Stars, cars, bars - Marimba; Narrator

Percussion Concerto

Carbon Paper & Nitrogen Ink - Marimba; Wind Ensemble
The Rule of Five - Two Percussion Soloists; Wind Ensemble
Zipzap - Drum Set; Wind Ensemble

Chamber Music With Percussion

In Another Man's Skin - Flute; Clarinet; Violin; Cello; Piano; Marimba
That Radiant Outburst - Clarinet; Cello; Piano; Marimba
Together - Vibraphone; Flute
Want It. Need it. Have It. - Marimba; Alto Saxophone or Flute or Clarinet