Byron Adams (*1955)

Byron Adams (b. 1955, Atlanta, Georgia, USA) is a composer, musicologist, and conductor. He was educated at Jacksonville University, the University of Southern California, and Cornell University, where he earned a doctoral degree studying composition with Karel Husa.

Adams is a composer of tonal music with an inimitable style who employs individual adaptations of traditional techniques. His music is melodic, contrapuntal, concise, and rhythmically alert.

Adams' music has been performed at the 26th “Warsaw Autumn” International Festival of Contemporary Music, the Conservatoire Américain in Fontainebleau, France (where he taught in the summer of 1992), and the Philharmonia Orchestra of London.

As a musicologist, Adams specializes in British music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His essays have appeared in journals such as ###i/i### and Music and Letters. In 2007, he was appointed scholar-in-residence for the Bard Music Festival, and edited Edward Elgar and His World (Princeton, 2007).

Byron Adams is Professor of Music at the University of California, Riverside.