about

Passionate about how music enables people to express themselves freely and honestly, Adan dedicates most of his time to study and perform music from the Western Classical Music tradition, developing empathy with composers’ stories and sharing them on stage with the utmost conviction. In recent years, he has had the pleasure of learning and performing works composed in the 21st century by composers such as Shulamit Ran, Augusta Read Thomas, David Clay Mettens, Gity Razaz, Caroline Shaw, Paul Desenne, Jesse Jones and John Adams, as well as performing Kristin Kuster’s Here, Leaving as a soloist with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. He finds interest in Historical Performance and how research and performance practice can help us understand the tools and devices that performers used to express the same stories we strive to tell nowadays centuries ago. During his time at Oberlin Conservatory and the Oberlin Baroque Institute, Adan performed music by Bach, Telemann, Marais, Handel, among others, on baroque cello. 

One of Adan’s most personal projects is performing music from Latin America, especially from his home country Venezuela. These works tell stories that reflect the culture that shaped him and he hopes to connect people through his performances of classical music works by Venezuelan composers, especially as the Venezuelan community has expanded worldwide since the 1990s. As a part of the “Super Team” ensemble with pianist Sofía Figuera Lairet and violinists José Gil and Gustavo Gil, they premiered works by argentinian composer Iván Périz, and performed arrangements of traditional Venezuelan music such as Niño Lindo and El Diablo Suelto. 

Inspired by the music around him from an early age, which included formal studies at the Colegio Emil Friedman in Caracas, Venezuela and a household that valued music as a language capable of expressing the deepest feelings, Adan started playing the cello at age 5. Motivated by his parents, Adan took his first audition at age 11 and was one of 10 cellists selected nationwide to attend the Academia Latinoamericana de Violoncello for the 2012-2013 academic year. During his time visiting schools by El Sistema and studying with various teachers, he was fascinated by the incredible achievement and musicianship of the cellists around him, who at a young age demonstrated potential to communicate mature musical ideas in an honest way, without fear of external judgement. The music he heard there pushed him to work towards musical goals that were personally meaningful, a lot of the time learning music by ear and or arranging music from other genres to play for those closest to him. 

Based in Panama between 2015 and 2021 he learned from several cellists, especially teachers Isaac Casal and Sébastien Hurtaud. He became a prize winner of the Concurso de Solistas Alfredo de Saint Malo, and represented Panama as the principal cellist of the Orquesta Juvenil Iberoamericana in 2019, performing in Mexico City, Mexico. Adan currently pursues his higher education in the United States. His undergraduate studies took place in Oberlin Conservatory where he studied with Dmitry Kouzov. At Oberlin he was deeply influenced by his teachers and peers, who inspired him to use music to collaborate in community building and to uplift all voices, both those protected by tradition and those obscured, underrepresented or silenced. He is now a graduate student at West Chester University, studying with Ovidiu Marinescu.