Adam Gorb

Professor Adam Gorb was Head of the School of Composition from 2000 – 2023. He was made a Fellow of the RNCM in 2007.

A winner of three British Composer Awards, he studied music at Cambridge University (BA 1980), Composition at the Royal Academy of Music (where he graduated with the highest honours including the Principal’s Prize in 1993), and in 2013 completed a PhD in Composition at Birmingham University. Prior to joining the RNCM Adam worked as a musical director and repetiteur in London’s West End and in repertory theatre and drama colleges, in addition to teaching composition at the London College of Music and Media and the Royal Academy of Music’s Junior Academy.

His compositions include orchestral, ensemble, chamber, solo, vocal and choral, and have been commissioned, performed, broadcast and recorded worldwide. His works, many of which are commercially available, have featured in new music festivals in Huddersfield, Cheltenham, Spitalfields and Canterbury, and he has been a featured composer at Luton and Bromsgrove music clubs snd on summer courses t Chetham’s and Sherborne. He has had concerts devoted to his music in the UK, the USA and Canada, and a chapter in A Composer’s Insight (Meredith Music USA 2013) is dedicated to his work. His operas Anya 17 (2012) and The Path to Heaven (2018) have been performed in Europe and the USA. There are several CDs devoted to his works including 24 Preludes written for the pianist Clare Hammond released in 2022 on the Toccata label.

Adam has been a guest lecturer in universities and conservatoires in the USA, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Holland, Ireland, Germany, Lithuania, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Austria and Australia.