Tenor Saxophonist Adam Roberts is an in-demand musician and educator. He performs and records on saxophones, guitars, flutes, and clarinets in a variety of genres including jazz, rock, funk, classical and pop. He plays in many local groups including Sonoran Jazz Project, The Doublers Collective, The Hot Birds and the Chili Sauce and Wicked Children (a jazz group playing Adam’s arrangements of Radiohead and other esoteric rock bands). He has performed with Gunther Schuller on his world premiere of “Encounters”, the Downbeat Award-winning NEC Jazz Orchestra at the IAJE Festival in 2004, jazz legend George Russell on a performance of The African Game, and Joe Lovano playing nonet arrangements from his 52nd Street Themes and On This Day at the Vanguard recordings.
Adam is very active in composition and transcription, writing original jazz, funk and rock works as well as arranging jazz standards, Radiohead songs and the horn charts for AZ-local soul sensation The Hot Birds and the Chili Sauce. He is also a skilled copyist with an extensive knowledge of Finale. See his work in Jerry Bergonzi’s celebrated Inside Improvisation series, Vol. 7: Hexatonics.
Adam is a seasoned music educator with 8 years of public school instruction, 6 years of college education and more than a decade of private instruction. Adam is the Saxophone Instructor at Glendale Community College and is the Director of Bands and Jazz Studies at the Arizona School for the Arts, a Blue Ribbon Arts Charter School in downtown Phoenix.
Adam holds 3 music degrees in both performance and education, including a Masters from the New England Conservatory of Music. He has studied with a wide array of teachers including Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Bob Brookmeyer, Danilo Perez, and Joel DiBartolo among others.
