David Carlton Adams is a composer, teacher, performer, and presenter of instrumental, vocal, and electronic music that seeks to cut, reflect, connect, and heal. He engages with contemporary chamber music, opera, improvisation, rock, and more. 

David’s music has been performed by the Talea Ensemble, Wet Ink Ensemble, Ensemble Linea, Friction Quartet, the JACK quartet, Old Bay New Music, One Ounce Opera, and many others. He is pursuing a doctorate in composition at the Peabody Conservatory, studying with Felipe Lara, Alyssa Weinberg, Eric Wubbels, Oscar Bettison, Joel Puckett, Vid Smooke, Tony Arnold, and Wendel Patrick. He is a co-director of Fast Forward Austin, a new music non-profit.

David teaches Music Theory and Musicianship at The Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins and at Towson University. He joined the faculty at the Walden School in the summer of 2024, teaching Composition, Musicianship, and a course on Rock music. David spent 4 years as a Graduate Assistant in Music Theory at Peabody, assisting Dr. Joel Puckett and Dr. Jessica Hunt in teaching the entire undergraduate core theory curriculum while completing his master’s degree and doctoral coursework. David is now part of the first wave of professors teaching a new Music Theory core curriculum designed to achieve new levels of inclusiveness and comprehensiveness. Before attending Peabody, David co-designed and taught the music curriculum for the Middle Years Program at the International School of Texas, and taught thousands of private lessons in the Austin metropolitan area.

As a performer, David has premiered his own works and those of others both as a soloist and alongside members of Friction Quartet, Wet Ink Ensemble, ICE, and more. Vocally, he has performed and recorded in choirs and as a lyric Baritone soloist, singing music from early to new. An electric guitarist with stage experience spanning over 20 years, he performed countless rock shows before transferring his skill and energy to the concert hall. An omnivorous electronicist, he works in hardware and software, in composed and improvised musics. He is building a TouchOSC microtonal keyboard for ipad (controlled by SuperCollider code of his own design with guidance from Sam Pluta), and has created a prototype analog stereo “fader/ momentary mute” pedal, designing, cutting, soldering, and building it at home in his basement. His custom Pedal Stool is an ever-evolving meta-instrument incorporating digital and analog effects pedals capable of processing inputs from electric instruments, microphones (eg, on voices), and contact mics. 

A co-director of Fast Forward Austin (501(c)3), David has presented fresh and exciting community-centered events bringing music that transcends the boundaries of established genres and traditions to non-traditional venues (think beer and food trucks). Featuring performances by groups such as The Bergamot Quartet, Spectrum Ensemble, Joy Guidry, Conspirare, VAMP, Adelante Winds, Graham Reynolds, HUB New Music, Kraken Quartet, One Ounce Opera, Austin Saxophone Ensemble, Less Than 10, Corps Multiple, Density512, and Dana Lyn’s Mother Octopus, David’s volunteer work for this new music non-profit has covered everything from grant applications, venue negotiations, and chair reservations to hauling gear, running sound, and MCing events. 

From complex modernist mayhem to gentle electric noise, from interdisciplinary dreamlands to intense composed theater, from games and graphically redacted grooves to microtonal madness, David lives in sound, and he’s not afraid to try something wild. 

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