Rudolph grew up and began playing music on the South Side of Chicago, performing with artists like Fred Anderson. By 1978 he was touring Europe with Don Cherry. Hailed by the New York Times as “a pioneer in world music”, in 1977 Rudolph began his collaborations with kora player Foday Musa Suso, followed by his work with the Gnawa musician Hassan Hakmoun, L. Shankar and other musicians from around the globe. His longest and most significant collaboration was with the great Yusef Lateef; from 1988 until Yusef’s passing in 2013 they performed as a duet and collaborated as composers on many large ensemble projects. “Even when I started focusing more on my own music projects in the early 1990’s, I would always make the time to tour and record with Yusef. I learned so much from him not only about music, but how to live a deeper more spiritual life.”
Since 1992, Rudolph’s primary outlet for his unique compositional vision has been his Moving Pictures ensemble. But in 2001, he founded Go: Organic Orchestra to expand his instrumentation. “I had always been interested in the idea of an orchestral concept of world music, and fascinated not only with the sounds but also with the organizing concepts that structure orchestrations from around the world. …the colotomic structure of Javanese Gamelan or the thematic fibers of a Bantu drum and trumpet orchestra are all valid ways of organizing orchestra. At the same time my approach to orchestra comes out of my work since 1974 in electronic music. With Go: Organic Orchestra, I feel the resonance of iconic electronic music composers such as Pierre Schafer, Stockhausen or Subotnick. And of course I am, like many creative musicians today, a student of the great 20th Century composers of the European tradition Messian, Carter, Ligeti, Bartok and my personal favorite, Toru Takemitsu.”
Rudolph has integrated and transformed these influences into a highly personalized language, a language whose rhythmic component, which he calls “Cyclic Verticalism,” combines polyrhythms (from African music) and rhythm cycles (from Indian music). Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra has performed worldwide at music festivals and served residencies in such countries as USA, Turkey, Mexico, Italy, Finland, Denmark and Norway.
![]() TURNING TOWARD THE LIGHT RUNE 406 |
On the Winter Solstice of 2014 the Northern Hemisphere’s longest night of the year composer, bandleader & percussionist Adam Rudolph convened 11 of New York City’s finest and most adventurous guitarists in a New Jersey studio for a most auspicious event: the debut of Go: Organic Guitar Orchestra, his all-guitar orchestra. In attendance were guitarists Rez Abbasi, Nels Cline, Liberty Ellman, David Gilmore, Miles Okazaki, and Marvin Sewell, all on electric guitars and effects; Damon Banks on bass guitar; Marco Capelli on acoustic guitar, effects; Jerome Harris on electric guitar, electric bass guitar, and lap steel guitar; Joel Harrison on electric guitar and national steel guitar; and Kenny Wessel on electric guitar and banjo. With Rudolph at the helm, conducting musical charts and creative improvisational energy, the orchestra began to play. The result is this extraordinary release, Turning Towards the Light. Turning Towards the Light press release |