MINIMUM SECURITY COMPOSER/CO-DIRECTOR
ADAM SILVERMAN

EMAIL: [adam at minimumsecurity dot org]

Adam B. Silverman <http://www.adambsilverman.com> is a New York City – based composer whose works have recently gained national attention through performances by the New York City Opera, Real Time Opera, The Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, The Brooklyn Symphony, The Albany Symphony Chamber Orchestra "Dogs of Desire," and chamber groups Eighth Blackbird, The Amelia Piano Trio, The Flux String Quartet, and Antares, including performances at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, La Jolla (CA) Chamber Music Society, and the Spoleto festival. His music ranges from opera (Korczak's Orphans) and classical concert works (the piano trio Sturm and String Quartet No. 2) to rock-based music for live performers and electronics (Strawberry Fields Continued for percussion, cellos, and recording), conceptual music-theater (Telemusic for phones and percussion and The Mostly True Story of Professor Leon and Me), and educational music.

Of Sturm, The San Diego Reader wrote, “The music’s stylistic ancestors seemed to include Fauré and Chausson (for the textures, the harmonies, and the superbly idiomatic instrumental writing), and John Adams (for the relentless drive and dynamic repetitiveness).” The New York Times said, “The most surprising work was Adam Silverman’s In Another Man’s Skin, gurgling washes of sweet tonality, slightly out of kilter, slightly tongue-in-cheek. Silverman earned the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Yale, and is a co-founding director of the Minimum Security Composers Collective, a group that collaborates with established ensembles and soloists to present concerts throughout the United States.

Silverman's most recent projects have included the composition of Korczak's Orphans, an opera based on the life of Polish Holocaust martyr Janusz Korczak, which is being developed by Real Time Opera and was performed by New York City Opera under the direction of George Manahan in their VOX Showcase in 2004. Another work, In Another Man's Skin, was performed dozens of times across the country throughout 2001-2003 by Eighth Blackbird. Other current and recent projects include residencies at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Tanglewood; compositions for chamber ensembles Flexible Music and Strata; music with film for pianist Lara Downes (commissioned by the Mondavi Center at University of California at Davis); and a large solo cello work for virtuoso Amy Sue Barston. His percussion music has recently attracted attention through performances at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center (Quick Blood, Juilliard Percussion Ensemble), Rutgers (Quick Blood, Rutgers Percussion Ensemble), Sydney Conservatorium (stars, cars bars, marimbist John Dewhurst) and in performances in New York and Delaware (Quick Blood, Battery Four Percussion).

Silverman studied composition at Yale (Doctor of Musical Arts, 2003), the Vienna Musikhochschule, and the University of Miami School of Music with Martin Bresnick, Anthony Davis, Ben Johnston, Ezra Laderman, Ned Rorem, Kurt Schwertsik, and Evan Ziporyn, and at festivals with Louis Andriessen, Olly Wilson, Chen Yi, Michael Gandolfi, Osvaldo Golijov, and Sebastian Currier.

His music is recorded and distributed by Frog Peak Music and Cane Records. He has also been active as a writer, with article publication in Contemporary Music Review, The American Music Center's New Music Box, 1/1: Journal of the Just Intonation Network and in prefaces to Ben Johnston's string quartets by Smith Publications. As program annotator for the Yale Philharmonia, Silverman provided notes for three seasons of orchestral concerts, a total of thirty-seven works.