Adam Rudolph

For the past four decades composer, improviser and percussionist Adam Rudolph has performed extensively in concert throughout North & South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Rudolph has been hailed as "a pioneer in world music" by the NY Times and "a master percussionist" by Musician magazine. He has released over 25 recordings under his own name, featuring his compositions and percussion work. Rudolph composes for his ensembles Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures, Hu: Vibrational percussion group, and Go: Organic Orchestra, an 18 to 54 piece group for which he has developed an original music notation and conducting system. He has taught and conducted hundreds of musicians worldwide in the Go: Organic Orchestra concept. In 1995 Rudolph premiered his opera The Dreamer, based on the text of Friedreich Nietzsche's "The Birth of Tragedy".

Rudolph has performed with Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Sam Rivers, Pharaoh Sanders, L. Shankar, A.A.C.M co-founders Fred Anderson and Muhal Richard Abrams, Wadada Leo Smith, and Omar Sosa. He has toured extensively and recorded 15 albums with Yusef Lateef including duets and their large ensemble compositional collaborations.

Born in 1955, Rudolph grew up in the Hyde Park area of the Southside of Chicago. From an early age he was exposed to the live music performances of the great blues and improvising artists who lived nearby. As a teenager, Rudolph started playing hand drums in local streets and parks and soon apprenticed with elders of African American improvised music. He performed regularly in Chicago with Fred Anderson and in Detroit with the Contemporary Jazz Quintet. In 1973 Rudolph played on his first record date with Maulawi Nururdin and with the CJQ at the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz festival.

In 1977 he lived and studied in Ghana, where he experienced trance ceremonies. In his travels throughout West Africa he saw how music can come from a cosmological grounding beyond music itself and can also be about something beyond music itself. In 1978 he lived in Don Cherry’s house in the Swedish countryside. Cherry inspired him to start composing and showed him about Ornette Coleman’s concept and the connection of music to nature.

Rudolph is known as one the early innovators of what is now called “World Music”. In 1978 he and Gambian Kora player Jali Foday Musa Suso co-founded The Mandingo Griot Society, one of the first groups to combine African and American music. In 1988, he recorded the first fusion of American and Gnawa music with Sintir player and singer Hassan Hakmoun. Rudolph intensely studied North Indian Tabla for over 15 years with Pandit Taranath Rao. He learned hundreds of drum compositions and about how music is a form of Yoga – the unity of mind, body and spirit. In 1988 Rudolph began his association with Yusef Lateef, with whom he has recorded over 15 albums including several of their large ensemble collaborations. Lateef introduced Rudolph to the inspirational practice of Autophysiopsychic Music – “that which comes from one’s spiritual, physical and emotional self”. Rudolph still performs worldwide with Dr. Lateef. Their performances have ranged from their acclaimed duet concerts to appearances as guest soloists with the Koln, Atlanta and Detroit symphony orchestras.

Dave Liebman / Billy Hart / Adam Rudolph: Beingness

Read "Beingness" reviewed by Mike Jurkovic

by Mike Jurkovic
June 12, 2025

There is something very other-worldly about Beingness. It runs on some taut meta-rhythms, courtesy of NEA Jazz Master, drummer Billy Hart, who hangs loose and fearless with award-winning, world music percussionist/composer Adam Rudolph. It sounds like free-falling. But not in a monochromatic death plunge. No, this is more a sure glide, like a leaf flirting across Bleecker in a new October, westbound breeze. A master class in hypnotic and collaborative invention, Beingness--Hart, Rudolph, and Hart's fellow NEA Jazz ...

Radio & Podcasts

Adam Rudolph On Being

by David Bixler
June 7, 2025

Known for his many exploratory projects, percussionist Adam Rudolph's latest recording, Beingness, features saxophonist Dave Liebman and drummer Billy Hart. The music was recorded over two nights from a residency at New York City's Stone and captures three venerated musicians in selfless conversation. In this episode of LINER NOTES Adam shares insight into his creative process taking a deep dive into the rhythmic and intervallic concepts that drive his work. This episode contains music from Adam Rudolph's Beingness. ...

Radio & Podcasts

Adam Rudolph: Conjuring Music’s Global Essence

by Lawrence Peryer
January 6, 2024

Today, the Spotlight shines On composer, improviser, and master percussionist Adam Rudolph. A global performer--and global citizen--Adam has been called “a pioneer in world music" by the New York Times. With dozens of recordings to his credit, he joined us upon the release of Timeless (Meta Records) from his percussion group, Hu: Vibrational. Adam has worked with artists including Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders, and many others but had a particularly extensive collaboration ...

Album Review

Hu Vibrational: Timeless

Read "Timeless" reviewed by Geno Thackara

by Geno Thackara
December 18, 2023

An Adam Rudolph recording is less a collection of musical pieces than of sound paintings. The elements he works with are musical ones--any instrument known to mankind might be used, and often even used to play notes--but traditions of form and melody tend to be tossed out the window from the start. The tones are treated as daubs of paint on a palette, splashed here and there whenever they will add something to whichever imaginary landscape he is evoking at ...

Album Review

Bennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph: Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef

Read "Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
May 31, 2022

Had the multi-reed player Yusef Lateef still been alive in 2020, he would have been celebrating his 100th birthday. Sadly, Lateef passed seven years earlier. But 93 years is a good span for a jazz musician, especially one of Lateef's generation, who came of age in time to cut his professional teeth in swing bands. Lateef went on contribute to bop--he was a member of Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1949--and then to hard bop. In the mid 1950s, ...

Album Review

Karuna Trio: Imaginary Archipelago

Read "Imaginary Archipelago" reviewed by Mark Sullivan

by Mark Sullivan
July 22, 2020

Percussionists Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake, and saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist Ralph Miles Jones play together as the Karuna Trio. These spontaneous compositions were built on a deep foundation of shared experience, dating back to their teen years, for Rudolph and Drake; Rudolph and Jones later played together in the Eternal Wind quintet. The concept here is that the music they were making is from a fantastical place: an imaginary archipelago. Each of the eleven tracks is named for an island in the ...

Album Review

Go: Organic Orchestra & Brooklyn Raga Massive: Ragmala: A Garland of Ragas

Read "Ragmala: A Garland of Ragas" reviewed by Angelo Leonardi

by Angelo Leonardi
July 13, 2020

Questo magistrale doppio album di Adam Rudolph nasce dalla collaborazione tra la sua Go: Organic Orchestra e il collettivo Brooklyn Raga Massive. Venti appassionanti brani che realizzano il monumento finale (ma certo non conclusivo) della quarantennale attività del percussionista dedita all'incontro tra musiche afro-americane, africane e asiatiche. Anche se Rudolph è considerato uno dei maestri della cosiddetta World Music non vorrei usare questo termine perché fuorviante e inadeguato a esprimere l'originalità della sua produzione in generale e di quest'opera in ...

Book / Magazine

Composer / Percussionist / Author Adam Rudolph Publishes 'Sonic Elements' For Instrumentalists And Composers

Source: Adam Rudolph
September 26, 2022

With Sonic Elements, composer and percussionist Adam Rudolph presents exciting and innovative ideas about intervals, harmony, and rhythms. He also expands upon his rhythm concept of “Cyclic Verticalism”, which he first presented in his 2006 book Pure Rhythm. Written for performers, students, educators, and composers, as well as anyone interested in music, Sonic Elements is a unique and profound contribution to books on music pedagogy and philosophy. In the introduction to Sonic Elements Rudolph writes: “The purpose of this ...
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Event

WMI And SummerStage Present Adam Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra And Guests on Saturday, September 10

Source: Kate Winn
August 26, 2022

With a 37-year curatorial presence in NYC, World Music Institute is mainly known for presenting traditional and contemporary music from around the world. However, in the early years, WMI's programming included the 'Improvisations'series, rooted at the intersection of NYC's jazz and improvised music scene and the music of our immigrant communities. The series brought together musicians from various backgrounds and cultures, including such visionary artists as Don Cherry, Yusef Lateef, Randy Weston, Hassan Hakmoun, Glen Velez, Foday Musa Suso, and ...
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Recording

M.O.D. Technologies To Release Hu Vibrational's The Epic Botanical Beat Suite - With Special Guests Eivind Aarset, Bill Laswell And More!

Source: hubtone PR
April 18, 2015

Hu Vibrational's new album mixes deep percussive African rhythms and Afro-jazz with elements of hip-hop and electronica. Recorded and mixed at Bill Laswell’s state of the art studio, this is the fourth album by Hu Vibrational and for those who bought the previous 3 releases this will not disappoint! Produced and mixed by Adam Rudolph together with longtime Laswell engineer James Dellatacoma, the album features 7 world music percussionists along several special guests including Bill Laswell hitting the deep pockets ...
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Radio

The Jazz Session #293: Adam Rudolph

Source: AAJ Staff
July 19, 2011

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Recording

Adam Rudolph: Both/And

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
June 23, 2011

If you're looking for where jazz is heading, I urge you to take a listen to Adam Rudolph's Both/And (Meta), which is out today. The CD features Adam's Moving Pictures ensemble along with his Organic Orchestra Strings. What makes this album special are the textures Adam whips up with Western and Eastern instruments and improvised motifs. Not content to feature traditional jazz lines and eager to channel music and rhythms of many cultures, Adam has created a hypnotic and spiritual ...
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Recording

Adam Rudolph and Ralph Jones - Ya Ya- (Meta)

Source: Master of a Small House
April 20, 2010

Subtitled “A Psalm of Prototypical Vibrations", Adam Rudolph's latest project for percussion and partner is firmly ensconced in the guiding spiritual philosophy that has long informed his playing. Under his conception, rhythms are a conduit and connective tissue for life. Percussive instruments, referred to here as membranophones and idiophones, are but one family of vessels through which these healing and sustaining vibrations travel. Rudolph's partner Ralph Jones handles a variety of reed and wind instruments, referred to collectively as aerophones, ...
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216

Performance / Tour

Adam Rudolph's Moving Pictures Tours East Coast; Yeyi Duo Tours Midwest

Source: Fully Altered Media
March 6, 2010

Composer & Master Percussionist Adam Rudolph Tours in March & April With Moving Pictures Quintet and Octet (Boston, New Haven, Teaneck, Philadelphia, New York City)

Yeyi Duet With Multi-Instrumentalist Ralph Jones Tours Midwest (Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Oberlin)

This March and April, master percussionist Adam Rudolph will tour the East Coast with a brand new edition of his Moving Pictures Quintet and Octet. Rudolph originally founded the group ...
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174

Recording

Go: Organic Orchestra Concert and Download

Source: All About Jazz
April 2, 2009

GO: ORGANIC ORCHESTRA will be performing a new series of concerts @ Roulette, New York city

MONDAYS May 11, 18, 25, 2009 8:30pm

It will be our 3rd year developing this prototypical concept at our triannual series @ Roulette and 8th year of the existence of the Go: Organic Orchestra concept. 42 musicians will be participating in performing new music.

Details: Roulette 20 Greene St. (between Canal and Grand) 2 blocks west ...
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167

Event

Leni Stern to Play with Morley, Salif Keita, Adam Rudolph's Organic Orchestra

Source: Seth Cohen PR
October 17, 2008

Leni Stern Joins Morley, Adam Rudolph's Organic Orchestra and Salif Keita for Upcoming 'Special Guest' Appearances Stern to Appear in Documentary on Hermeto Pascal Recent Television Appearance Features Two Live Performances New Leni Stern CD in the Works; Headlining Shows Set for NYC Acclaimed singer/songwriter/guitarist Leni Stern will make a series of 'Special Guest' appearances in the weeks and months ahead. On October 23rd, she will join her friend Morley at Joe's Pub in New York City, for the CD ...
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127

Recording

New Omar Sosa CD Release 'Pictures Of Soul' Duo Recording with Percussionist Adam Rudolph

Source: All About Jazz
January 8, 2004

Pictures of Soul is an improvised music collaboration between Cuban pianist Omar Sosa and Los Angeles-based percussionist Adam Rudolph. These two creative musicians have enjoyed each other's work at a distance for several years. Both share an appreciation of ritual trance music - music that leads us into altered states of consciousness. In April of 2002, when Sosa and his Septet arrived in Los Angeles for a run at the Jazz Bakery, it was possible for these kindred spirits to ...
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"A pioneer in world music" - The New York Times

"Double Concerto proved a masterful blending of jazz styling and instrumental prowess." - Variety

"A Percussion wizard" - Down Beat

"An intriguing, and, to these ears, utterly unique aural experience." - Option Magazine