Baltimore-based percussionist and performer Adam Rosenblatt has a penchant for finding interesting and uncommon ways to present and perform contemporary music. He has a keen interest for growing an interdisciplinary performance practice, believing that a mix of media and art forms can speak more directly and powerfully to our current context.
Adam frequently performs with such groups as the Ictus Ensemble in Brussels, Belgium, and Trinity Wall Street’s NOVUS NY, and is a founding member of percussion trio QuaQuaQua and mixed ensemble Something Out There, both of which focus on the ambiguous space between musical and theatrical performance. Adam has recently performed in such varied venues as Bang On a Can’s “LOUD Weekend” at MassMoCA with Horse Lords; Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York; and Maschinenhaus Theater in Essen, Germany.
Highlights of Adam’s 19-20 season include performances at Bregenzer Festpiele to premiere a new 7-hour music theater work by François Sarhan, shows with Horse Lords throughout the US and Europe, concerto performances with Beyond This Point and the Chicago Composer’s Orchestra, and “in situ” performances of François Sarhan’s Situations at Festival Musica in Strasbourg, France.
Adam’s interest in interdisciplinary performance has led him to conceive and produce evening-length multimedia programs of contemporary music. He premiered GODLY CHAOS in 2017, a performance focused on free will and determinism from perspectives of the spiritual and philosophical to the scientific. Adam added original arrangements, staging, lighting design, and original projection design to works by John Cage, Steve Reich, Mark Applebaum, David Lang, Alexander Schubert, and others. In 2019, Adam premiered Reclaimed Timber, a production consisting of Michael Gordon’s percussion sextet Timber that spoke to issues of housing and homelessness. Adam sourced the instruments directly from abandoned and vacant houses in Baltimore, and worked with local light artists Matthew McCormack and Jenn Figg to create a reactive light installation made of more than 5000 LEDs, which responded in real-time to the instruments onstage.
Adam avidly collaborates with composers to bring new and exciting works to fruition. He has premiered many works by emerging composers in venues such as Gare du Nord in Basel, Het Veem in Amsterdam, the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore, and Q-O2 in Brussels. With Something Out There, Adam recently co-developed and performed in new productions in Moers and Essen, Germany; Paris and Orleans, France; and Bregenz, Austria. Adam continues to keep the creation of new works and collaborations with composers among his highest priorities, having had the great fortune in past years to work closely with such composers as David Lang, Thierry de Mey, François Sarhan, and James Wood.
Adam also devotes much of his energy to introducing contemporary music to young people in creative ways. He has collaborated extensively with Belgian presenter Zonzo Compagnie, participating in their “music rooms” program and in their “Big Bang" festivals in Lisbon, Brussels, Lille, and Gent. As an extension of these productions, Adam has co-created and led interactive body percussion workshops for children in Antwerp, Belgium, and in Yerevan, Armenia. Currently, Adam co-directs the percussion program at the Peabody Preparatory in Baltimore.
Adam earned a Bachelor of Music Degree from the Peabody Conservatory and a Master of Music Degree from the Yale School of Music, both under the tutelage of Robert van Sice. Through grants from the Flemish Government, the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund, and the Belgian American Education Foundation, Adam performed and studied contemporary chamber music with the Ictus and Spectra Ensembles in Belgium as part of their Advanced Masters academy program.
Adam is currently an artist in residence at The Creative Alliance in Baltimore.