Skip to page content

Adam Schoenberg

composer

About this Artist

Emmy Award-winning and GRAMMY®-nominated composer ADAM SCHOENBERG has twice been named among the Top 10 most-performed living composers by orchestras in the United States. With more than 200 orchestral performances worldwide, his works have been performed by such orchestras as the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, National Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and Los Angeles Philharmonic at venues including The Kennedy Center, Library of Congress, and Hollywood Bowl among others. His numerous achievements include the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, ASCAP Morton Gould Award, and two MacDowell Fellowships. 

Recent commissions include his percussion concerto Losing Earth for Jacob Nissly and the San Francisco Symphony; violin concerto Orchard in Fog for Anne Akiko Meyers and the San Diego Symphony; cello concerto Automation for Yves Dhar and the Louisville Orchestra; a companion piece to Copland’s Appalachian Spring for a consortium of ensembles; a concerto for orchestra to be premiered by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; and a commission from Carnegie Hall. 

Schoenberg’s orchestral debut album “Adam Schoenberg: American Symphony, Finding Rothko & Picture Studies” with Michael Stern and the Kansas City Symphony was nominated for three GRAMMYs, including Picture Studies for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Schoenberg enjoys a vast discography, and the year 2022 brought two new releases: “The Blakemore Trio Plays Music of Adam Schoenberg” under the Blue Griffin label, and “Migration”, featuring his Symphony No. 2, under the Reference Recordings label.

For film and TV, Schoenberg has composed soundtracks for several productions, including Graceland, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival; PBS’s That Far Corner: Frank Lloyd Wright in Los Angeles, which received two Emmy Awards; and ABC’s Nightline theme package. Schoenberg routinely writes music for museums such as Dubai’s Museum of the Future and works on curated sound installations. 

Schoenberg received his Doctor of Musical Arts from The Juilliard School where he studied with John Corigliano, Academy Award-winning composer for The Red Violin. He is a tenured professor at Occidental College where he teaches composition and film scoring. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, playwright and TV-writer Janine Salinas Schoenberg, and their two sons, Luca and Leo.