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Fred Adams

Fred Adams is an inspiring composer who discovered the creative, artistic form of compositional writing at the Philadelphia College of Performing Arts, where he studied trumpet and piano.

Fred is most noted for his thirty year association with the Sun Ra Arkestra and has toured throughout the world as a longstanding member. Sun Ra encouraged Fred to lead his own band and he later founded the Philadelphia Heritage Art Ensemble. It started out as vehicle to present late Philadelphia composers (Hank Mobley and Lee Morgan), along with original compositions through a residency at the Mill Creek Cultural Center. There Fred joined the house band with additional artists and the sextet was born. The band was later renamed Philadelphia Heritage Art Ensemble. Presently the ensemble is a hallmark of Philadelphia jazz and beyond.

Fred's creative endeavors continue where he was commissioned by the Philadelphia Composer Forum to write two ragtime compositions in 2005 and 2007. Inspired by the music of WC Handy, Fred reimagined ragtime music for the twenty-first century.

With deep knowledge across all musical idioms, Fred continues to write, perform and inspire others.

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Liner Notes

Sun Ra at Inter​-​Media Arts, 1991

Read "Sun Ra at Inter​-​Media Arts, 1991" reviewed by Howard Mandel


On April 10, 1991, the night of this concert at Inter-Media Art Center in Huntington, Long Island, Sun Ra was near the apogee of his earthly transit. Having led his transformative iterations of his Arkestra around the globe for an unlikely if not unimaginable four decades, the visionary composer, keyboardist, conceptualist and cosmologist was, even though in recovery from a stroke, at the peak of his powers, two years from breaking free of his local orbit entirely. He ...

176
Album Review

Philadelphia Heritage Art Ensemble: Under The Bridge

Read "Under The Bridge" reviewed by AAJ Staff


If you think that the remainders and reminders of hard bop reside today within the music of Horace Silver, the keeper of the flame—and perhaps within that of very few others like Valery Ponomarev—think again. The jazzmen of Philadelphia, from which much of hard bop arose, never forgot it. In fact, they celebrate it...in concerts, in tributes, in writings, on radio and in schools.Fred Adams decided to concentrate all of these references into a single group, the Philadelphia ...

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Performance / Tour

Fred Adams & The Phila. Heritage Art Ensemble In Collingswood NJ On Thurs. Feb. 7th!

Fred Adams & The Phila. Heritage Art Ensemble In Collingswood NJ On Thurs. Feb. 7th!

Source: Jim Miller

Appearing at the Collingswood Community Center—30 East Collings Avenue in Collingswood, New Jersey—on Thursday February 7th, is trumpeter Fred Adams and his Philadelphia Heritage Art Ensemble. Tickets are $10, $5 for students, and are available at the door only. Showtime is 7:30 p.m.

Originally a New Yorker, but raised in Philadelphia in the '60s, Fred Adams is an incredibly versatile, forward-looking and forward-thinking jazz trumpeter, is the director of the Philadelphia Heritage Art Ensemble, and has toured the world and ...

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Crossing The Bridge 2

Self Produced
2019

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Sun Ra at...

Self Produced
2015

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Under The Bridge

Dreambox Media
2001

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