Adam Greene is a composer writing primarily instrumental works intended to re-explore the multidimensional interaction between composer, performer, and listener. He cites his collaborations with skilled and imaginative performers as vital to this pursuit and central to his musical development.

“Imagine that the musical score is the locus for a negotiation, of sorts, where sometimes radical and contradictory demands must be mediated by bodily constraints, informing a personalized interpretation. If this seems like a tenuous or volatile situation in which to make music, it is also inherently dramatic and richly engaging. The ineffable mysteries of human expression, and the virtuoso ideal romanticized in common practice classical music have no place in this new music. Instead, it is our humanity in its fallibility, its enduring spirit, and its generosity that is celebrated in a manner that, while certainly complex, is also direct, even tactile.”*

Writing music with a distinct dramatic intent, Greene often takes a textual source (either by authors and poets such as Calvino and Beckett or written by the composer himself ) as a point of departure. Indeed, his preoccupation with drama has led him (back) to the Classics, which have inspired a growing series of new works.

Currently, Greene is composing a String Quartet (subtitled “Threnody”) for the Daedalus Quartet, a work supported by a commission from the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard. The work laments the persistence of war and the folly of sacrifice viewed through the lens of Greek drama and epic poetry, with the aftermath of the Trojan War as the point of departure.

Greene has received a "Subito" grant from the American Composers Forum which supports work on a new project, entitled Accord, for Shannon Wettstein and Patti Cudd, who are forming a new piano-percussion duo based in Minnesota. The piece is a musical "reading" of the final scene in the Oresteia in which Athena (piano) and the Furies (percussion) argue about justice and vengeance, with war looming as a potential result of the conflict.

"Autocritical Composition: an Emerging Method," a discussion of Greene's compositional process, has been published as part of the proceedings to the "Composer Au XXIe Siècle: Processus et Philosophies" conference of the OICM. Read the article here.

* From "Maturity for the Modern Composer." Lecture given in 2003.