Adams is the seventh Alaskan to receive the award, which comes with a prize of $25,000.
It's been a good three weeks for the Fairbanks-based musician. On April 29, Adams was named the 2010 winner of the biennial Michael Ludwig Nemmers Prize in Music Composition presented by the Northwestern University Henry and Leigh Bienen School of Music. He received $100,000 and will have one of his works performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
In 2006, with Tlingit weavers Teri Rofkar and Anna Brown Ehlers, Adams was among the first three Alaskans to receive $50,000 fellowships from United States Artists, a national group started with money from the Rasmuson, Ford, Rockefeller and Prudential foundations.
Working in the Fairbanks area for the past 32 years, Adams has achieved an international reputation with compositions that reflect the natural environment and often use audible elements drawn from it. His 1993 multimedia piece "Earth and the Great Weather" included recordings of migrating birds and the wind blowing through the Brooks mountain range. His sound installation "The Place Where You Go to Listen," which opened in the University of Alaska Museum of the North in Fairbanks in 2006, takes real-time readings of natural phenomena like daylight, temperature and seismic activity to generate tones that slowly shift as conditions change.
Also in 2006, his long percussion work "Strange and Sacred Noise" was performed outdoors in the desert at Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California. Last year, his first work specifically composed for outdoor performance, "Inuksuit," premiered in Banff, Canada.
Other compositions, many of which are available on recordings, have been performed in major European venues.
In addition to the yet-to-be-determined piece to be played by the Chicago Symphony as part of the Nemmers Prize, another work by Adams, "Dark Waves," was already scheduled to be performed by the Chicago Symphony on Oct. 28 and 29 this year. That piece debuted with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra in February 2007.
Twenty-eight other Alaskans were also honored with grants by the foundation on Tuesday.
Receiving Fellowship Awards of $12,000:
• John Damberg, jazz musician, Anchorage.
• Hal Gage, photographer, Anchorage.
• Diane Melms, fiber artist, Anchorage.
• Carl Johnson, photographer, Anchorage.
• Gretchen Sagan, printmaker, Anchorage.
• Charles Mason, photographer, Fairbanks.
• Jim Fowler, painter, Juneau.
• Jeremy Kane, potter, Juneau.
Receiving Project Awards of up to $5,000:
• Karen Benning, writer, Anchorage.
• Jason Parizo, multidiscipline artist, Anchorage.
• Jimmy Riordan, printmaker, Anchorage.
• Robin Lovelace-Smith, folk artist, Anchorage.
• Ricky Vang, Hmong folk musician, Anchorage.
• Harold Wallin, filmmaker, Anchorage.
• Peter Porco, writer, Anchorage.
• Tom Sexton, poet, Anchorage.
• Wendy Smith-Wood, fabric artist, Sutton.
• Miranda Weiss, writer, Homer.
• Christopher Ho, filmmaker, Bethel.
• Brookelyn Bellinger, filmmaker, Delta Junction.
• Jessie Hedden, artist, Fairbanks.
• Brian Schneider, photographer, Fairbanks.
• Etsuko Kimura Pederson, composer, Fairbanks.
• Robin Dale Ford, songwriter, Fairbanks.
• Arthur Fisak, craft artist, Manley Hot Springs.
• Arlo Hannigan, folk musician, Nome.
• Phoebe Gonzales Rohrbacher, artist, Juneau.
• Lani Hotch, traditional fabric artist, Haines.
More information about the artists and the foundation can be found at www.rasmuson.org.
Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.
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