Adam Grimes

I could cite many diverse influences in my work: though I did not understand it for many years, there are clear connections to my family’s Appalachian roots and origins, and probably to folksongs that came with those people from the British Isles.

Elements that many would associate with repetitive Minimalism play a big part in my work: small units that are repeated, often essentially unchanged, against other isolated units. Rather than Minimalist, I think of these textures as “mechanistic.’ While many composers have pictured the modern world in harsh chaos, I offer a different picture: angular textures, complexity built from the interaction of many simple units, and repetition of patterns. Setting these mechanistic sections against more organic texture is a key element of my compositional approach.

My harmonic language is essentially tonal, though far-ranging at times. We cannot un-ring a bell; modern ears have heard things that were unthinkable for early generations. As I write this, I’m sitting in a major city listening to jack hammers on the street; the sheer volume of that mechanical sound would have been completely foreign to anyone a few hundred years ago. In addition, we’ve heard music by Bartok, Messiaen, those Second Viennese School guys, Jimi Hendrix, late Miles Davis—any composition approach that does not pick up those threads seems, at least to me, to be meaningless pastiche.