Adam Gilbert

Adam Knight Gilbert is professor and director of the Early Music Program and Chair of Musicology at University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music. He earned his BMus. in Early Music at the Mannes College of Music (1984) where he studied with Paul Echols, Dennis Godburn, Valerie Horst, and Stephen Hammer. He received his MA and PhD at Case Western Reserve University (2003) and taught musicology at Stanford University. Adam received the 2008 Noah Greenberg Award and the 2014 Thomas Binkley Award with his wife Rotem Gilbert, with whom he directs ensemble Ciaramella, and he is a recipient of the 2025 Gabler KulturPreis of Füssen Germany. Since 1981, he has performed and recorded on recorder and shawm, and as a member of groups including Ensemble for Early Music, Piffaro, the Waverly Consort, and as a guest with numerous ensembles. He studied at KU Leuven in Belgium (1998-2000) as a Fulbright and Belgian American Education Foundation C.R.B. Fellow, and he now is a Senior Research Fellow of the Alamire Foundation at KU Leuven in Belgium. Adam’s research and publications focus on Renaissance improvisation, compositional processes, historical performance practice and pedagogy, musical symbolism, and musical sources at Mission San Gabriel. The topic of this class grows out of his current book project, “Symmetry in Song”.