I had a blast putting together this concert with the incredible Marmen Quartet and Dutch percussionist Dominique Vleeshouwers for the String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam. The piece will continue to tour next season in Europe, with shows at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and the Muziekgebouw Eindhoven and elsewhere. More soon!

Here is a blurb about the project:

Percussionist Dominique Vleehouwers, the Marmen Quartet, and composer Samuel Adams explore the many ways time and space can inhabit a concert for string quartet and percussion. Time is how you spend your love ranges widely — from core repertoire for string quartet and solo percussion to unexpected collaborations between the two — while threading through themes of repetition, resonance, devotion, and obsession. At its heart are Adams' two works for this unusual pairing: Sundial, which paints a dreamlike sonic landscape, and Devotions, an instrumental cantata in seven movements that draws on the form and expressive language of Olivier Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. And when Beethoven repeats the same tiny motif no fewer than 48 times in the Scherzo of his Sixteenth String Quartet, it becomes clear he was no stranger to playing with time either.

I’m super excited to share the news that my new string quartet was just released into the wild.

This is a beautiful performance by the Alma Quartet, who commissioned the work. Listen to the record HERE.

Many thanks to Marc Daniel, Ben, Jeroen, and Clément.

-Sam

This fall was a busy one!

In October, Other Minds presented a portrait concert of Adams, featuring stunning performances by some of his closest collaborators, including violinist Helen Kim, pianists Conor Hanick and Sarah Cahill, percussionist Haruka Fujii, and the Friction Quartet.

Joshua Kosman called the concert “a rolling, eclectic tour of a highly original musical imagination,” and Adams “clearly a creator of deep originality operating at the highest levels of inventiveness.”

Read Kosman’s review here.

In November, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players gave the West Coast premiere of First Work with soprano Winnie Nieh. The SF Classical Voice praised the piece for its “engaging textures, sensuous lines, and shimmering ensemble timbres,” and Joshua Kosman remarked: “I couldn’t quite believe the transformative power of the music I’d just heard.”

A world premiere and a European premiere of Sam’s will happen in September at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. On the 21st is the Concertgebouw-commissioned Variations, which was completed during his time as composer-in-residence and which had to be postponed due to COVID. On the 25th in the kleine zaal, the Amsterdam-based Alma Quartet will premiere his third string quartet.

Gramophone magazine says: "Adams shows himself to be among the most interesting composers of the millennial generation in his negotiation of the tensions that shape and define his musical narratives: between directness and implication, silence and resonance, emotion and its aftermath."

The Strad hails the record as "a deeply rewarding disc that is by turns exhilarating and emotionally affecting, from a composer with very much his own distinctive voice – and captured in close, detailed sound."

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Bandcamp writer Peter Margasak writes: "This superb portrait album from composer Samuel Adams captures his ability to shade and collide acoustic music rooted in the classical tradition with subtle electronic flourishes that transform his writing in mysterious ways."

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which includes a new work by Sam for organist James McVinnie and conductor Vimbayi Kaziboni to be premiered as part of the inaugural California Festival at Walt Disney Concert Hall this November.

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Read reviews:

Wall Street Journal ↗
San Francisco Chronicle ↗
Musical America ↗