Biographical Info

Adam Gorb (born in 1958) studied Music at Cambridge University and Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he graduated with the highest honours, including the Principal’s Prize, in 1993. His compositions include orchestral, ensemble, chamber, solo and choral works, and have been performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. In the UK his compositions have been featured at contemporary music festivals in Huddersfield, Cheltenham, Hampstead and Highgate, Vale of Glamorgan, Spitalfields and Canterbury, and he has had concerts devoted to his music in the UK, the USA, Canada and South Korea. He has been composer-in-residence at Luton and Bromsgrove music clubs and at the Chetham’s International Summer School in Manchester in 2019.

His concert-band composition, Metropolis, has won several prizes, including the Walter Beeler Memorial Prize in the USA in 1994. It was released by the Classicprint label in 2000 and received a five-star review from MusicWeb International: ‘Adam Gorb has written cool, exhilarating music, requiring staggering virtuosity from the players for what is a spellbinding exercise in orchestral modern jazz’. Three other wind-ensemble pieces, Towards Nirvana, Adrenaline City and Farewell, have won British Composer awards. His works have been performed by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, the Maggini Quartet, the BBC Singers, the Tokyo Kosei Wind Ensemble, the Royal Marines, Psappha and the Liverpool 10/10 ensemble.

In 2010 a CD devoted to his works (Farewell, Scenes from Bruegel, Ascent and Towards Nirvana) was released on the NMC label: ‘a recording which captures the music’s impact but also its delicacy in full measure’ – Gramophone Awards issue 2010. In the same year, a large-scale choral work, Eternal Voices, was premiered in Exeter Cathedral. In 2011 a CD of his chamber works was released on the Prima Facie label, and his opera Anya 17 (2012) was premiered in Liverpool and Manchester to great acclaim, with productions in Germany in November/December 2013 and the USA in 2014 and 2016. Another Prima Facie CD of his large ensemble works, ‘Dancing in the Ghetto’, was released in 2015: ‘Well recorded and performed with great panache, this is a collection of works that has proven mightily stimulating … the balance between frothy fun and truly thought-provoking music is very well struck indeed’ – MusicWeb International.

His second opera, The Path to Heaven, with an accompanying wind ensemble, was premiered in the UK in 2018 with productions in the USA in 2019 and 2020. A review from The Arts Desk described it as music of ‘extraordinary skill, passion and beauty’. Recent works include a song cycle, Beggars Belief (his fifth collaboration with the librettist Ben Kaye), a work for the Australian saxophonist Katia Beaugeais and 24 Preludes for the pianist Clare Hammond released on the Toccata label CD in 2022.

Adam Gorb has been a Visiting Lecturer in Composition at universities and conservatoires in the USA, Canada, Tokyo, Vienna, The Hague, Brussels, Vilnius, Weimar, Dublin, Verona and Istanbul. He is Head of School of Composition at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester.