Byron Adams

Byron Adams (born 1955) is an American composer, conductor, musicologist, and educator. A composer of tonal music, he is known for using individual adaptations of traditional techniques.

His music has been performed in America by such institutions as The West Virginia Symphony, the Syracuse Symphony, Cantori New York, Chamber Music Palisades, Pacific Serenades, the new music ensemble Xtet, and at the Colburn School String Orchestra. His principal publishers are Editions BIM, Earthsongs, E.C. Schirmer, and Yelton Rhodes.

He is currently the Professor of Composition and Musicology in the Music Department of the University of California, Riverside.

Byron Adams was born in 1955 in Atlanta, Georgia.

He earned a Bachelor of Music Degree, magna cum laude, from Jacksonville University, studying piano with Mary Lou Wesley Krosnick and composition with Gurney Kennedy. He then went to the University of Southern California and received his Master of Music. His principal composition teacher there was the National Medal of Arts recipient Morten Lauridsen. Adams then received his doctoral degree from Cornell University, studying composition with Czech composer Karel Husa and musicology with noted musicologist William Weaver Austin.

Adams is a composer of tonal music with a strong stylistic profile who employs individual adaptations of traditional techniques. His music has been performed at the 26th Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music, Bargemusic, the Da Camera Society of Los Angeles, and the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, France (where he taught in the summer of 1992), as well as by such ensembles as Cantus, the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra, and the Philharmonia Orchestra.

From 1990-1992, Adams was the composer-in-residence for the Colonial Symphony Orchestra.

As a musicologist, Adams specializes in British music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has published widely on the subject and his writings have appeared in journals such as The Musical Quarterly and Music and Letters. He has also covered this topic over the BBC and at three National Meetings of the American Musicological Society.

In 2000, Adams received the Philip Brett Award for his work on British music from the American Musicological Society.

In 2007, Adams was appointed scholar-in-residence for the Bard Music Festival and edited Edward Elgar and His World (Princeton, 2007). In 2013, he was appointed one of the series editors for Music in Britain 1600-2000 published by The Boydell Press.

He co-edited (with Robin Wells) Vaughan Williams Essays, a book on English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.

He has contributed four entries to the revised edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians(edited by British musicologists Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell).

Currently, Adams is a Professor in the Music Department of the University of California, Riverside.

• 1977: won the Grand Prize of the Delius Festival Composition Competition.
• 1984: awarded the Raymond Hubbell-ASCAP award for his compositions.
• 1985: granted the first Ralph Vaughan Williams Fellowship of the Carthusian Trust.
• 2000: the American Musicological Society recognized his scholarship with the Philip Brett Award.
• In 2007, Adams was a Visiting Fellow for the Institute of Musical Research, School of Advanced Studies of the University of London.
• 2010: named a Distinguished Alumnus of Jacksonville University.

Adams is a past president of the North American British Music Studies Association; an associate editor of The Musical Quarterly; and a scholar-in-residence for the Da Camera Society of Los Angeles.

• "Thor's Hammer": Sibelius and the British Music Critics, in the volume Sibelius and His World, ed. Daniel M. Grimley (Princeton University Press, 2011), 125-157.
• "Musical Cenotaph: Howell's Hymnus paradisi and Sites of Mourning", in the volume The Music of Herbert Howells (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press), 285-308.
• Scripture, Church and culture: biblical texts in the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Vaughan Williams Studies, ed. Alain Frogley, Cambridge University Press, 1996:99-117.
• No Armpits, Please, We're British: Whitman and English Music, 1884-1936, in the volume Walt Whitman and Modern Music, ed. Lawrence Kramer, Garland Press, 2000: 25-42.
• Vaughan Williams Essays, ed. Byron Adams and Robin Wells, Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2003. 280 pp.
• Elgar's later oratorios: Roman Catholicism, decadence and the Wagnerian dialectic of shame and grace in The Cambridge Companion to Elgar, ed. Daniel M. Grimley and Julian Rushton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 81-105.
• Edward Elgar and His World, ed. Byron Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 426 pp.

• 2014: Trittico for piano duet
• 2013: Eventide for Male Chorus
• 2013: Partita for Harpsichord
• 2012: Serenade for Nine Instruments
• 2011: Sonata for viola and piano
• 2008: Illuminations for piano solo
• 2007: Ashes of Soldiers for a cappella mixed chorus
• 2006: Le Jardin Provençal for flute, oboe, 'cello and harpsichord
• 2005: Variationes alchemisticae for flute, viola, 'cello and piano
• 2003: Overture to a Lyric Comedy for string orchestra
• 2003: Praises of Jerusalem (Psalm 122) for chorus and organ
• 2002: High O'er the Lonely Hills for chorus and organ
• 2002: The Vision of Dame Julian of Norwich for soprano, harp and string quartet
• 2001: Concerto for violoncello and orchestra
• 2000: Psalm XXIII for soprano and oboe
• 1999: Trois Illuminations for chamber chorus and harp
• 1999: Trois Poèmes de Ronsard for soprano, flute, harpsichord and 'cello
• 1999: Suite on Old Nautical Airs for tuba and piano
• 1998: Four Holy Songs for baritone and small orchestra
• 1998: Midsummer Music for orchestra
• 1996: A Psalm of Blessing for soprano and woodwind quintet
• 1996: Music for Duke Orsino's Table, a Divertissement for flute, viola, harp and percussion
• 1996: Irises for clarinet, harp, and strings
• 1995: Suite from Twelfth Night for small orchestra
• 1994: Set Me as a Seal for unaccompanied male chorus
• 1994: Canticum amoris for male chorus, horn, piano and double bass
• 1993: A Passerby for male chorus and piano
• 1991: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death for unaccompanied male chorus
• 1991: Quatre Illuminations for soprano and chamber ensemble
• 1990: Capriccio concertante for orchestra
• 1988: Intrada and Alleluia for brass and percussion
• 1988: Magnificat for chorus, trumpet and organ (revised and orchestrated in 1996 for chorus, trumpet, organ and strings)
• 1987: Three Epitaphs for women's chorus and piano
• 1987: Nocturne for soprano, 'cello and piano
• 1985: Ballade for piano and orchestra (revised1998-99)
• 1984: Missa brevis for unaccompanied male chorus
• 1983: A Joyce Triptych for unaccompanied women's chorus
• 1983: Sonata for trumpet and piano
• 1982: Two Madrigals for unaccompanied male chorus
• 1982: Requiem Songs for soprano, violin and 'cello
• 1981: Concerto for trumpet and strings
• 1979: Nightingales for soprano, clarinet, 'cello and piano