Paul Adams

Adams began his foray into the arts by making stringed musical instruments such as guitars, banjos, basses, and dulcimers after he was introduced to the craft as an ethnomusicology student under Dr. Joel Maring at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Adams has been commissioned to build instruments by Daryl Hall, members of Stevie Wonder's band as well as other well known musicians. He has twelve albums out in multiple genres and can be heard on Siriusxm music, Music Choice, Apple Music, Spotify and Pandora Radio where he has over 101 million streams. In May 2016 his most recent album, Imaginings, won Best Contemporary Instrumental Album of the year at the Zone Music Reporter Awards in New Orleans. The follow up album Deeper Imaginings, a collaboration with Australian musician ⟨Elizabeth Geyer⟩ was released in November 2019.

Adams' eight other album titles would fit in genres such as jazz, world fusion, acoustic, ambient, and eclectic. He has said that staying confined to one music style does hurt the connection to an audience. But he feels making variations of one style would be like a painter painting sea shores for an entire career. The Property of Water was completed using computer music pioneer Laurie Spiegel's intelligent computer music program called The Music Mouse (now out of production). It was then blended with Adams' acoustic built instruments as well as personally recorded sounds in nature. Laurie commented it was a "wondrous blend of silicon and wood". A View From the Plain is an aural painting of the land utilizing finger style guitar and all acoustic instruments such as Guitar, Dulcimer, Fiddle, Banjo and Dobro. In The Land Where I Come From was a venting of lyric compositions bathed in pop, jazz, and poetic recitations. This Christmas also focused on traditional holiday tunes supported with similar instrumentation found on A View From the Plain. He followed with three albums utilizing exotic world instrumentation and Native American and Indian flutes that are aimed for those wanting to slow down the pace of our world (Flute Meditations For Dreaming Clouds, Heavens, and Sleep). The album Sleep won Native American album of the year at the Zone Music Reporter awards in New Orleans in 2013. His album Imaginings won Zone Music Reporter Contemporary album of the year in 2016. It was a foray in to world music with Pravin Godkhindi, the wondrous Australian musician Elizabeth Geyer, and David Hoffman. A follow up album entitled Deeper Imaginings, a collaboration with Elizabeth Geyer was released in November 2019. Also on the album is Pravin Godkhindi, former Gentle Giant guitarist Gary Green and Alp Akmaz on Balabad (An beautiful instrument that sounds similar to the Daduk).

In the 1980s, Adams decided to start composing music and got a label deal with Nature Recordings/World Disc (now defunct). His first album, Various Waves, was placed in the Top Five of the Year by the syndicated Radio Show Musical Starstreams in the 1990s. The Metro Silicon Valley stated that "Adams is perhaps the most important New Age musician since George Winston."

Paul Adams (born August 1951) is an American musician, writer and musical instrument builder.