Adam Roberts

Adam Roberts’ music has been performed internationally by ensembles such as the Arditti Quartet, the JACK Quartet, le Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, the Callithumpian Consort, Earplay, fellows of the Tanglewood Music Center, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, Transient Canvas, violist Garth Knox, and Guerilla Opera and at festivals such as Wien Modern (Vienna), Tanglewood, the Biennale Musique en Scene (Lyons), and the 2009 ISCM World Music Days (Sweden).

Awards for Roberts’ music include a 2016 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fromm Commission, the Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award, the Bernard Rogers Prize (Eastman), the New York Bohemians Prize (Harvard), the André Chevillion-Yvonne Bonnaud Prize from the Orléans Piano Competition, the Earplay Donald Aird Award, the Christoph and Stefan Kaske Fellowship from the Wellesley Composers Conference, the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship from the Tanglewood Music Center, and the Blodgett Prize (Harvard) as well as other academic scholarships and awards. Commissions have come from the Callithumpian Consort, the Boston Conservatory Wind Ensemble, pianist Nolan Pearson, the Tanglewood Music Center, Guerilla Opera, and others.

Roberts’ music has been called “a powerful success,” “arresting,” and “amazingly lush” (the Boston Musical Intelligencer); “an attractive mix of the familiar and exotic” and “otherworldly” (Boston Classical Review); and “invigorating” with a “persistent melodic urge” (American Academy of Arts and Letters citation).

Roberts obtained a Bachelor’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music in 2003 and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2010. Roberts also studied at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna from 2007-2008 on a Harvard University Sheldon Traveling Fellowship. Prior to joining the faculty at Kent State, Roberts taught at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Istanbul Technical University’s Center for Advanced Studies in Music, and the University of Georgia’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music. Roberts’ first disc, “Leaf Metal,” was released on Tzadik Records in January, 2014. Other recordings of Roberts’ work can be found on the New Focus Recordings and Lila Müzik labels.

Learn more about Kent State's Music Theory and Composition programs