Home » Jazz Musicians » Adam Hopkins

Adam Hopkins

Adam Hopkins is a bassist, composer, educator, and semi-professional parallel parker born and raised in Baltimore MD and relocated to Brooklyn NY in 2011. He has extensive experience performing jazz and improvised music and has played with professional orchestras in Maryland, Virginia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and the DC metro area. His debut album CRICKETS has received international acclaim from a variety of sources, most notably ranking as the #2 Debut Album in the 2018 NPR Jazz Critics Poll. Adam was also named the #2 Newcomer Musician for 2018 in the International Critics Poll organized by El Intruso.

Adam currently appears in a number of NYC-based ensembles both as a leader and sideman. As a sideman he closed 2017 with performances led by Henry Threadgill as well as a European tour with John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet. He performs regularly with BeepHonk, Laila & Smitty, Anna Webber’s Rectangles, Danny Gouker’s Signal Problems, Christopher Hoffman Trio, Kate Gentile Mannequins, Tomeka Reid’s Stringtet, Dustin Carlson’s Air Ceremony, Ideal Bread, Patrick Breiner Double Double & Practical Mysticism. He currently leads three NYC-based bands (Adam Hopkins' Crickets, Bells + Wires, and Party Pack ICE). Adam has studied double bass with many great performers and teachers of the instrument, including Michael Formanek, Jeffrey Weisner, Jack Budrow, Rodney Whitaker, and Sam Cross and additional studies with Drew Gress and Gary Thomas.

In August of 2018 Adam launched Out Of Your Head Records, an artist-run Brooklyn-based record label dedicated to creative music and original visual art in limited runs. He enlisted the help of two of his closest collaborators, TJ Huff and Nick Prevas, to shape the visual image of the label. On October 19, 2018 Adam released his debut album CRICKETS as the first release on the label.

In addition to being a performer he has extensive experience as a curator. In 2009 he co-founded an improvised music collective called the Out of Your Head Collective, which maintained weekly performances in Baltimore for 5+ years at The Windup Space. Upon moving to New York in 2011 he started a Brooklyn-based chapter which involved over 100 of the city's greatest improvisers. Additionally he was a long-term co-curator for two Brooklyn-based weekly music series, A.E. Randolph Presents and 65Fen.

Adam held a faculty position at Loyola University for six years as a professor of double and electric bass, music theory, ear training, and jazz ensembles. Currently he teaches privately in his home studio and designs improvisation-based workshops for business through sfz Creative, a company he co-founded with musical associates Eric Trudel and Danny Gouker.

Read more

Tags

9
Album Review

Anna Webber: Rectangles

Read "Rectangles" reviewed by John Sharpe


Canadian saxophonist Anna Webber's quartet provides a second winning entry in Out Of Your Head Records' digital Untamed series, following Nick Dunston's Atlantic Extraction: Live At Threes (2020). Webber calls the band Rectangles after a composition inspired by a sequence of 10-second videos on the YouTube test channel Webdriver Torso which consist of a string of high pitches coupled with images of red and blue rectangles flashing across the screen. If that premise sounds unpromising, the execution is anything but. ...

8
Album Review

Peter Hess Quartet: Present Company

Read "Present Company" reviewed by Jim Worsley


What word to say first, refreshing or wow? Perhaps, wow, this is refreshing! With the assorted amount of experimental jazz that often needed more time in the lab, that is an assault on the unsuspecting ear, the Peter Hess Quartet have concocted their own penicillin. No longer lab rats, minds can be allowed to thrive and grow. With seven original compositions, the first five by Hess, this quartet was clearly not content to rely on the tried and ...

10
Album Review

Webber / Morris Big Band: Both Are True

Read "Both Are True" reviewed by John Sharpe


On Both Are True Canadian composers and reed players Anna Webber and Angela Morris reimagine the language of the big band. They extend the tradition through adventurous arrangements spiced with the unpredictability of improv, by co-opting the nimbleness of a much smaller group, and reveling in non-standard techniques. Webber has already garnered plaudits for the work of her Simple Trio with Matt Mitchell and John Hollenbeck, while Morris' ventures such as the Motel Trio boast a lower profile so far. ...

Read more articles

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Both Are True

Greenleaf Music
2020

buy

Present Company

Diskonife
2020

buy

Rectangles

Out Of Your Head
2020

buy

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.