ABOUT

Andy Adamson Bio

Andy Adamson is a self-taught composer and musician native to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Since beginning his musical journey in sixth grade, Andy has composed original music for all of his independent bands, culminating in a vast catalog of innovative modern jazz compositions, along with many R&B, funk and popular vocal tunes. Andy has played keyboards continuously for over 50 years now, and aside from being with his family, Andy is happiest when he’s playing the keys.

In his adolescence, Andy performed with multiple bands while attending Slauson Junior High and Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor, learning an impressive variety of popular songs by ear. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, Andy played fraternity parties and an assortment of other gigs before graduating with a BS in Biology in 1975. Rather than pursuing a career in biology, Andy pursued his passion, playing music full time throughout the Metro Detroit Area.

In 1986, Andy quit the Detroit club scene and began playing weekend weddings while he went back to college. He graduated with a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Michigan in 1991. Shortly after, Andy was hired as a System Research Programmer by the Center for Information Technology and Integration (CITI) to do distributed file system and computer security research, writing code for the Linux Kernel. Andy was promoted to a Research Investigator position at the University and was appointed Assistant Director of CITI in 1997, where he was part of a team that successfully proposed research projects to companies and government agencies. Andy was the Principal Investigator or Co-Principal Investigator, hiring students and running many such computer science research projects. Andy left the University in 2008 to work from home for NetApp, a California based computer company where he continued writing Linux Kernel code, until he retired in 2017. Andy's computer resume

Andy remained very active in music throughout his entire computer career, continuously performing, practicing and writing compositions. Over the years, Andy played a wide range of musical styles, including jazz standards in solo and trio settings, cuban folk music with Melodioso, rockabilly swing with Dick Siegel’s Ministers of Melody, funk and Motown with Norma Jean Bell and the All Stars, disco and rock with multiple Detroit based club bands, rhythm and blues with the Ann Arbor band F.U.B.A.R. and Rock & Roll with the Ann Arbor band Medicine Men and the Westside Girls.

Andy Adamson’s latest original jazz band has been together as a quartet since 2014 and as a quintet since 2017. They released A Cry For Peace as a quartet in 2015, First Light as a quintet in 2017 and Live at Cliff Bell's in 2019. Andy truly values the friendship and musicianship of his band mates Brennan Andes, Dan Bennett, Johnathan Taylor and Ross Huff. Together they have created a common vision that drives the arrangement and production of Andy's compositions.

The Andy Adamson Quintet recently finished their upcoming album A Coincidence of Cats, which features a diverse collection of fusion and traditional jazz compositions. The record is set to be released later this year, in August 2022.

MEET
THE PLAYERS

Jonathan
Taylor

Drummer, composer and percussionist