Mariam Adam, Blair associate professor of clarinet, recently premiered the revised and rescored version of the Clarinet Concert by Russell Platt at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, New York. The work was performed by Adam with the Manhattan Chamber Players and conducted by Alexander Platt, music director of Maverick Concerts, the oldest continuous summer music festival in the United States.
Platt, who serves as adjunct professor of music at Blair, originally wrote the piece in 2002-03 for the Wisconsin Philharmonic and Russell Dagon (the late principal clarinetist of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra), commissioned by the American Composers Forum. Written in the shadow of the 9/11 disaster, which Platt experienced while living in New York as a journalist, the Concerto is an exciting, virtuoso work scored with strings, piano and percussion which moves freely between Romantic, modernist, and American jazz idioms.
Commenting on the piece and the performance, Mariam Adam said:
One of the best ways to ensure a piece of music will have longevity is working with a composer, which is why I was delighted to learn professor Platt had a clarinet concerto he wanted to show me a couple years ago. This piece is a rollicking journey of different moods, sass, and extensive use of the clarinet in all its ranges. The interactive moments between soloist and ensemble convey an earnest dialogue that is at one point interrupted in a capitulating moment by the percussion. The source of inspiration for this piece was a time that we were both in New York City, when the common experience of tragedy, fear, and then unity brought millions of people together. I had such a fun time preparing this debut of this concerto and can’t wait to perform it again!
Russell Platt concurred, noting:
This piece was originally written for the superb principal clarinet of the Milwaukee Symphony, but the revised version has found its ideal interpreter in Mariam, whose virtuosity has been shaped by her broad experience as a musician fluent in the varied styles of the American continent.
The Manhattan Chamber Players were also joined by Grammy-nominated flutist Valerie Coleman for the July 6, 2025, performance. Coleman will appear in Turner Recital Hall at Blair School of Music on October 6.
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About Russell Platt:
The music of Russell Platt (b. 1965) has been performed by the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Borromeo, Escher, and Calidore String Quartets, New York Festival of Song, Brooklyn Art Song Society, the Horszowski Trio, the tenor Paul Appleby, the flutist Molly Barth, the bassoonist Peter Kolkay, and The Knights. Educated at Oberlin, Curtis, Cambridge, and the University of Minnesota, his teachers included Ned Rorem, Dominick Argento, Judith Lang Zaimont, and Alexander Goehr. A winner of both the Charles Ives Scholarship and Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he has composed at Yaddo, Civitella Ranieri, Copland House, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
After joining the music faculty at Vanderbilt, he won an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Tennessee Arts Commission in 2023. His most recent work, “Arizona Echoes,” was commissioned by the College Band Directors National Association and premiered in April of 2025 by Thomas Verrier and the Vanderbilt Wind Ensemble. Before turning to music full-time he was a music editor at The New Yorker, where he won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Criticism in 2010. RussellPlatt.com
About Mariam Adam:
Mariam Adam, clarinetist, is an internationally known chamber musician, soloist, music advocate and educator originally from Monterey, California. A founding and former member of the Grammy-winning woodwind quintet, Imani Winds, she maintained an active international touring schedule for almost two decades with performances at Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Beijing Arts Center, Hollywood Bowl among hundreds others with numerous awards/noted recordings including “Best of iTunes 2016”. Since moving to France in 2016 she has performed throughout Europe with Eric le Sage, Francois Salque and at such festivals such as Folle Journee, Colmar Festival, Radio France Festival as featured artist and more. She has soloed with Singapore Symphony, Appassionata Ensemble, Orchestra de Pau, and toured with Quatuor Zaide, Jerusalem Trio as well as with legendary satirist, Gaspard Proust. Her last solo album, Havana Moon with TransAtlantic Ensemble, was Sirius XM’s Best of Symphony Hall list, and Grammophone said “Coolly virtuoso performances lit by flashes of passion”.
Since 2016, she has been visiting principal clarinetist with London-based Chineke! Orchestra and chamber ensemble and several recordings. With them she was featured in their Samuel Coleridge-Taylor documentary, In Tune, and the BBC Proms. She has over a dozen recordings that can be heard on E1 Classics, Steinway label, Warner Classics, Signum, Orchid with her profile featured on NPR’s Performance Today. She has had works written for her by Valerie Coleman, Scott McAllister, Fred O and John Wineglass with regular invitations to ClarFest, BUTI Tanglewood, YOLA, Alarm Will Sound and solo appearances. Adam is a Vandoren and Paris Selmer artist, visiting professor at the Cleveland Institute of Music, and is professor of clarinet at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music. She balances her time between Nashville and Paris.