Though he grew up in a music-focused environment, Mead Composer-in-Residence Samuel Adams explains in this short video that “composing was something that came to me very late.”

After starting piano lessons at age 4, Adams moved on to performing as a jazz bassist during his early teens. In college, he studied acoustics and electronic music. “I think it was these three very disparate musical experiences — as a concert pianist, as an improvising jazz bassist and as a computer nerd — that made me want to be a composer because composing was the only way I could make these three currents converge into something that made sense,” Adams says in this video interview conducted by Elizabeth Ogonek, his fellow Mead composer-in-residence.

Adams and Ogonek, who curate the CSO’s MusicNOW series, have selected works by composer-vocalists Kate Soper and Agata Zubel to anchor the series’ next program, titled (sub)text, on March 7 at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance. For more details, click here.