Adam Rudolph
Adam Rudolph is a composer, improviser and percussionist who has performed extensively in concert throughout North & South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia for three decades. Rudolph has been hailed as “a pioneer in world music” by the NY Times and “a master percussionist” by Musician magazine. He has released 25 recordings under his own name, featuring his compositions and percussion work. Rudolph composes for his ensembles Moving Pictures and Organic Orchestra, an 18 to 54 piece group for which he has developed an original music notation and conducting system. He has taught and conducted hundreds of musicians in the Organic Orchestra concept; most recently in Sicily, Naples, Oslo, and Istanbul, NYC and LA.
Rudolph recently premiered his opera The Dreamer, based on the text of Friedreich Nietzsche’s “The Birth of Tragedy.” Rudolph has performed with Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Sam Rivers, Pharaoh Sanders, L. Shankar, A.A.C.M co-founders Fred Anderson and Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, and Omar Sosa. He has toured extensively and recorded 15 albums with Yusef Lateef including duets and their large ensemble compositional collaborations.
Rudolph is known as one the early innovators of what is now called “World Music”. In 1978 he and Gambian Kora player Jali Foday Musa Suso co-founded The Mandingo Griot Society, one of the first groups to combine African and American music. In 1988, he recorded the first fusion of American and Gnawa music with Sintir player and singer Hassan Hakmoun. Rudolph intensely studied North Indian Tabla for over 15 years with Pandit Taranath Rao. He learned hundreds of drum compositions and about how music is a form of Yoga – the unity of mind, body and spirit.
