Paul Adams

Paul Adams is a world and new age musician from San Jose, California. He describes himself as a luthier, composer and multi-instrumentalist, and he also works as an instrument maker and collector. He studies ethnomusicology and says he is drawn to the idea of unity within diversity, which he brings into his music through a wide range of cultures and traditions.

Music and recordings

Adams has seven albums that are described as critically acclaimed. His first album, Various Waves, places in the top five of its year. His second album, Wonder Dancing on Global Bop, draws on jazz, world fusion, flamenco and bluegrass. The Property of Water is built as a meditative piece and uses Laurie Spiegel’s Music Mouse computer program rather than a conventional synthesizer keyboard. It wins the best album of the year award from Wind and Wire magazine in 1998.

A View from the Plain is a fingerstyle guitar album inspired by prairie landscapes and includes a cowboy-style version of Pachelbel’s Canon. His holiday album, This Christmas, uses instruments he makes himself, including guitar and dulcimer, alongside dobro and mandolin, and it receives five stars from the Peoria Journal Star. Flute Meditations for Dreaming Clouds uses more than twenty flutes from his collection and also includes Balinese gamelan gongs. In the Land Where I Come From combines poetry, mysticism and a storyline about an imaginary place called Butterland, and features guest appearances by trumpet soloist David Hoffman and Kit Watkins, who has played with Camel and Happy the Man.

Collaborations and other work

Adams builds guitars and other instruments for a range of musicians, including Daryl Hall and members of Stevie Wonder’s band. He also composes commercials for companies including Siemens, Subaru, Motorola, Caterpillar and Chrysler. He co-produces From Energy to Stillness with David Hoffman, another trumpet soloist and arranger associated with Ray Charles, and the album is recorded by sending digital tapes back and forth while Hoffman is on tour.

He forms the band The Neurons with Hoffman after Hoffman’s long period with the Ray Charles band ends. Adams is also active in mental health, with more than 24 years’ experience in the field, and he teaches therapists, physicians and individuals how to use music for conditions including anxiety, addiction and depression.