Adam Mirza is a composer, improviser, and sound artist based in Atlanta. His creative work plays with the opposition between real and virtual (also: live/recorded, acoustic/electronic, in-person/online). He uses alternative performance techniques, recording practices, signal processing chains, and immersive multichannel audio to re-stage sounds as part of a re-imagined environment.

 

Adam released his first portrait album of chamber music Partial Knowledge on New Focus Recordings in Fall 2024. The album features performances by contemporary music ensembles loadbang, Mivos String Quartet, Bent Frequency, Unheard-of//Ensemble, and Amorsima Trio. His live electronic and fixed media pieces have been presented at various conferences and festivals for experimental electronic music, including SEAMUS, NYCEMF, RES, ICMC, and NIME. In 2013 he was invited as a guest composer to the Zurich New Music Days, and he has received artist residencies to Millay Arts and the Hambidge Center for the Arts.

 

As an improviser, Adam performs on violin and laptop. He performs regularly with Akiva Zamcheck as part of their electronic music duo Fake Radiolab, with recent performances at venues and festivals in NYC, Chicago, Miami, Utah, and Serbia. The topic of Fake Radiolab’s forthcoming album is the authoritative voice in contemporary media genres (like podcasts and YouTube videos), whose conventions are referenced and subverted through exaggeration and parody. He also creates sound installations such as his Ghost Quartet, which re-animate broken music instruments, turning them into speaker-objects. His sound installation Outside In: Toronto ran all day between live acts during the 2023 Intersection Festival, transforming a live feed of the downtown soundscape at Sankofa Square back to passers-by.   

 

Adam is an associate professor of music at Emory University.