JACOB ADAMS, pianist 

Gershwin's Concerto in F

Born in St. Paul, MN, Jacob Adams began his musical studies in percussion at the age of 5 and began studying piano at the age of 10. Throughout junior high and high school, he was actively involved as a soloist, collaborative pianist, jazz band pianist, and theater pit orchestra pianist, both in school and throughout the Twin Cities area. He made his orchestral debut in May 2002 with the Minneapolis Civic Orchestra and in the fall of 2003 he began studies at the Cleveland Institute of Music under the tutelage of Van Cliburn silver-medalist Antonio Pompa-Baldi. While there, he earned a B.M. and M.M. in Piano Performance/Literature and continued his extensive solo and collaborative work.

Jacob won 2nd prize in the Venetia Hall Piano Concerto Competition in March 2006, 2nd prize in the piano duo category of the Bradshaw and Buono Competition in April 2007, as well as the William Kurzban Prize in Piano from the Cleveland Institute in May 2007. He has made solo appearances with the Rappahannock Pops Orchestra (March 2007 - Fredericksburg, VA), Suburban Symphony Orchestra (December 2008 - Beachwood, OH), and the Case Symphonic Winds (April 2009 - Cleveland, OH). He came into contact with Dr. Beverly Everett and the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra in the summer of 2010 and participated with them in the Kitchigami Library Tour in August of that year. He is also an accomplished organist and harpsichordist.

An avid ragtime fan for most of his piano-playing life, Jacob has participated in ragtime festivals throughout the Midwest. He has been a regularly featured performer at the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival in Sedalia, MO since 2009, the Eau Claire, WI and Tinley Park, IL Ragtime Festivals since 2010, and in 2011 he was a runner-up in the Old-Time Piano Playing Championship in Peoria, IL. In addition to preserving ragtime through performing, he is also an ardent ragtime composer and has premiered his works at the Scott Joplin, Tinley Park, and Eau Claire Festivals and won 1^st Prize in the 2010 New Rag Contest in Peoria, IL. His "Fantasy and Rag" won 1st Prize in the Minnesota Music Educators Association High School Composition Contest in January 2001, and he and 4-hand partner Evan Fein premiered his 4-hand rag "Easy Come, Easy Go" in NYC's Bechstein Center in December 2007.

Jacob is currently studying at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana where he is pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Piano Performance/Literature, an additional Master of Music degree in Piano Pedagogy, as well as teaching private and group piano lessons.

LIBBY LARSEN, composer

Overture for the End of a Century

"Music exists in an infinity of sound. I think of all music as existing in the substance of the air itself. It is the composer’s task to order and make sense of sound, in time and space, to communicate something about being alive through music."    - Libby Larsen

Libby Larsen (b. 24 December 1950, Wilmington, Delaware) is one of America’s most prolific and most performed living composers. She has created a catalogue of over 400 works spanning virtually every genre from intimate vocal and chamber music to massive orchestral works and over twelve operas. Her music has been praised for its dynamic, deeply inspired, and vigorous contemporary American spirit. Constantly sought after for commissions and premieres by major artists, ensembles and orchestras around the world, Libby Larsen has established a permanent place for her works in the concert repertory.

Larsen has been hailed as “the only English-speaking composer since Benjamin Britten who matches great verse with fine music so intelligently and expressively” (USA Today); as “a composer who has made the art of symphonic writing very much her own.” (Gramophone); as “a mistress of orchestration” (Times Union); and for “assembling one of the most impressive bodies of music of our time” (Hartford Courant). Her music has been praised for its “clear textures, easily absorbed rhythms and appealing melodic contours that make singing seem the most natural expression imaginable.” (Philadelphia Inquirer) “Libby Larsen has come up with a way to make contemporary opera both musically current and accessible to the average audience.” (The Wall Street Journal). “Her ability to write memorable new music completely within the confines of traditional harmonic language is most impressive.” (Fanfare)

Libby Larsen has received numerous awards and accolades, including a 1994 Grammy as producer of the CD: The Art of Arlene Augér, an acclaimed recording that features Larsen’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. Her opera Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus was selected as one of the eight best classical music events of 1990 by USA Today. The first woman to serve as a resident composer with a major orchestra, she has held residencies with the California Institute of the Arts, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, the Philadelphia School of the Arts, the Cincinnati Conservatory, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony, and the Colorado Symphony. Larsen’s many commissions and recordings are a testament to her fruitful collaborations with a long list of world-renowned artists, including The King’s Singers, Benita Valente, and Frederica von Stade, among others. Her works are widely recorded on such labels as Angel/EMI, Nonesuch, Decca, and Koch International.

As a past holder of the 2003-2004 Harissios Papamarkou Chair in Education at the Library of Congress and recipient of the Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Libby Larsen is a vigorous, articulate champion of the music and musicians of our time. In 1973, she co-founded (with Stephen Paulus) the Minnesota Composers Forum, now the American Composers Forum, which has been an invaluable advocate for composers in a difficult, transitional time for American arts. Consistently sought-after as a leader in the generation of millennium thinkers, Libby Larsen’s music and ideas have refreshed the concert music tradition and the composer’s role in it.