Biography

Adam Gorb was born in 1958 and started composing at the age of ten. At fifteen he wrote a set of piano pieces – A Pianist’s Alphabet – of which a selection was performed by Susan Bradshaw on BBC Radio 3. In 1977 he went to Cambridge University to study music, where his teachers included Hugh Wood and Robin Holloway. After graduating in 1980 he divided his time between composition and working as a musician in the theatre. In 1987 he started studying privately with Paul Patterson, and then, from 1991 at the Royal, Academy of Music where he gained a MMus degree and graduated with the highest honours, including the Principal’s Prize in 1993.

His works have been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. Notable pieces include Metropolis for Wind Band (1992), which has won several prizes including the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in the USA in 1994. Prelude, Interlude and Postlude for piano, won the Purcell Composition Prize in 1995. Kol Simcha, a ballet given over fifty performances by the Rambert Dance Company and Awayday (1996) for Wind Band which, along with Yiddish Dances, (1998) also for Wind Band have had thousands of performances world-wide, and many commercial recordings. Yiddish Dances also exists in arrangements for piano duet, guitar quartet and flexible ensemble. A Violin Sonata was premiered by Thomas Bowes and Eleanor Alberga at the Spitalfields Festival in London in 1996. Reconciliation for Clarinet and Piano was commissioned for the Park Lane Young Artists New Year series in 1998, and Elements, a Percussion Concerto written for Evelyn Glennie and the Royal Northern College of Music Wind Ensemble in 1998 was released on CD in 2001.

In 1999 his Clarinet Concerto for Nicholas Cox was premiered with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and in 2000 A Distant Mirror for Brass Band was played at the Cheltenham festival, Weimar for chamber ensemble, 2000 and Downtown Diversions, a trombone concerto, in Texas in February 2001. Other works include String quartet no. 1 for the Maggini Quartet, which was premiered at Bromsgrove music club in February 2002, and Towards Nirvana, which received its first performance by the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble in October 2002, winning a British Composer award in the in the Wind and Brass ensemble category in 2004. Diaspora for eleven strings was given its premiere by the Goldberg Ensemble in February 2003.

2004 saw the premieres of French Dances Revisited in Minnesota, USA, and La Cloche Felee for soprano and piano in the Purcell Room. 2006 saw the premiere of Adrenaline City for the USA Air Force Academy Band. This work went on to win another British Composer Award in 2008.  Fasolt’s Revenge for the Tennessee Tech Tuba Ensemble and A Better Place for the Zephyr Ensemble of Great Britain were also premiered in 2006.

In 2007/8 a cantata Thoughts Scribbled on a Blank wall (based on the experiences of the political prisoner John McCarthy who co-wrote the libretto with Ben Kaye) received several performances in prestigious venues including Canterbury Cathedral and Kings College Cambridge. Another wind Band work Farewell won a third British Composer Award in 2009. Serenade for Spring (2008) for small orchestra had its premiere at the Hampstead and Highgate Festival, and later that year Into The Light for eight cellos was premiered at the RNCM, and String Quartet no. 2 was played by the Tippett Quartet.

2010 saw the premieres of Absinthe for piano and Eternal Voices; a large-scale choral work with words by Ben Kaye which was premiered at Exeter cathedral in November 2010 with the Exeter Festival Chorus and the Band of the Royal Marines.

He collaborated for a third time with Ben Kaye on an opera Anya 17 which was premiered by singers from the RNCM with the RLPO 10/10 ensemble Liverpool and Manchester in March 2012. – there have subsequently been productions in Germany, Romania  and the USA.

Works from 2013-15 include a Cello Concerto which has been performed by Abel Selaocoe, A Celebration for the Northern Chamber Orchestra and Velocity for the pianist Clare Hammond. In 2016 In Solitude, For Company was played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and Melange a Trois was premiered by the Pleyel ensemble. Adam Gorb’s second opera The Path to Heaven received its premiere in Leeds and Manchester in 2018. There have been three subsequent productions in the USA.

A CD of 24 Preludes for piano played by Clare Hammond was released in 2022 on the Toccata Classics label. 2022/2023 saw two US premieres of Wind Ensemble works: a Concerto for violin and viola in Athens, Georgia and Out of the Darkness in Cleveland, Ohio. In 2023 Long Distance Call for soprano saxophone was given its first performance by Katia Beaugeais at the World Saxophone Congress in Gran Canaria. Adam Gorb’s fifth collaboration with Ben Kaye: Beggars Belief was performed in the Wigmore Hall in 2023 and is due to be recorded along with other recent chamber works.

Another forthcoming CD release is a Clarinet Quintet for Linda Merrick and the Kreutzer quartet.

Professor Adam Gorb was Head of School of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester from 2000 – 2023, He still teaches there and at the Royal Marines School of Music. He has a PhD in Composition from the University of Birmingham and has taught at universities in the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, South Korea and many European countries.