Adams’s style

Birdsong This is a constant thread in Adams’s work, culminating in Ten Thousand Birds, an open-ended collection of flexible pieces. He is not so much interested in literal representations of birds, but how we listen to them, what we hear and what is lost in translation.

Time Sometimes it can feel as if not much is happening in Adams’s music, as if you were watching a cloud drift by. Yet his music demands that the listener slows down and pays attention, and then it feels that everything is happening. Subtle surface nuances are twinned with longer-term shifts in the music. Space Adams creates expansive spaces in his music. Sometimes that’s through quite literal means: choosing a large outdoor location or using huge casts of performers. Sometimes it’s more of an illusion, created through moments of stillness in the music, for instance. Drumming A rock drummer when he was growing up, while in Alaska Adams got to know traditional Iñupiat drumming and became fascinated by the shifting rhythms and metres. His pieces often feature intense and impactful drumming sequences.