Cellist Darrett Adkins belongs to a new generation of American musicians who are redefining the concert experience. His critically acclaimed performances of contemporary music have inspired critics to call him “Stunning”, “Intensely involving”, “Heroic”, and “Fiery”. His appetite to bridge the world between the established tradition and the avant-garde enables him to explore repertoire in almost every genre – from the classical cannon, to the contemporary frontier.

Mr. Adkins' New York debut of Samuel Barber's Concerto, with Per Brevig conducting the Orchestra of St. Luke's at Alice Tully Hall in 1999, prompted Strings magazine to call him "an adventurous champion of contemporary music." His Aspen debut was made with just 3 days notice when he performed Pierre Boulez’s Messagesquisse with James Conlon conducting. In the summer of 2002, Adkins was the ‘Cellist of Honor’ at the Rio de Janeiro International Cello Encounter, where he gave master classes, recitals and concerto performances. King Harald of Norway attended his Oslo debut, and he maintains a special relationship with Norwegian music and musicians. His many performances of Norwegian works and with Norwegian musicians earned him a Cultural Arts Grant from the American Scandinavian Society in 2004. Other recent appearances include standard concertos with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Tokyo Philharmonic, the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra, Tochio Soloisten, Seoul’s Prime Orchestra, Cleveland’s Red {an orchestra}, the North Carolina and New Hampshire Symphony Orchestras.

Mr. Adkins’ has also given many important first performances. He gave the American premiere of Donatoni’s cello concerto at Tanglewood, where he also performed Birtwhistle’s Meridian. He gave the world premiere of Andrew Mead’s Cello Concerto with the Oberlin Contemporary Music Ensemble. In addition, he also gave the first New York performance of Luciano Berio’s sequenza XIV, which he has recorded for release on Naxos’s complete sequenzas collection, the first such recording. With Red {an orchestra} he helped develop and premier the new dramatic work “Schubert Songbook” which features himself on cello and soprano Arianna Zuckerman in a dramatic setting of orchestrated Schubert songs.

From 1997 until 2002, Mr. Adkins was a member of Flux, a string quartet dedicated to cutting-edge music. He appeared in major festivals in New York, Melbourne (Australia), Southern California (Ojai), and Oslo. During his tenure with the Flux Quartet, he participated in numerous first performances, including the first complete live performance of Morton Feldman’s monumental Quartet II, lasting a continuous 6 hours. Alex Ross, the chief music critic of The New Yorker described it as “a disorienting, transfixing experience that repeatedly approached and touched the sublime”. The group subsequently recorded the work on Mode records, which was released in 2001.

In addition to the Mode label, Mr. Adkins has recorded for the Naxos, RCA, Tzadik, Koch, MMC, and CRI labels, and his recording of duos by Ravel, Kodaly and Roger Sessions is available through MP3.com. Mr. Adkins joined the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music at Oberlin College beginning in the fall of 2003 and has been on the faculty of the Juilliard School since 1995. In 2003 he joined the faculty of the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he teaches cello and co-directs the string chamber music program.

Besides receiving degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Norman Fischer, and the Juilliard School, where he was a student of Joel Krosnick, Adkins also earned a Master of Music degree from Rice University. He is originally from Tacoma, Washington and now lives in Oberlin, Ohio with his wife Ingrid and their three children.