Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Adam Fong is a composer, performer and producer of new music, and a community leader in arts and culture. He co-founded and led two arts service organizations: Emerging Arts Professionals (founded 2009) and the Center for New Music (founded 2012). Fong received the MFA in Music Composition at California Institute of the Arts, where he studied with James Tenney and Wadada Leo Smith; he also holds a master’s degree from Stanford University (English). His compositions have been performed widely, and he is a frequent lecturer, advisor, and panelist on experimental music, cultural entrepreneurship, arts leadership, cultural strategy, and community building. He is currently Program Officer in Performing Arts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where he manages a diverse portfolio of grants supporting artists, communities, and youth throughout the Bay Area.
ShakeTheAir.com is an archive for Adam Fong’s creative practice as a musician, composer, and cultural entrepreneur. Arising from an early passion for music of many styles, Adam’s approach to creativity focuses on community, learning, and experimentation. Musical projects and productions have led to creative arts administration, new arts collectives, new organizations, original research, environmental impact projects, and more.
Shake the Air refers not only to the vibrations of sound, but also to the communal practice of sounding and reverberating together, literally and metaphorically. The study of social systems animates this archive of work, which consists of music, writing, and documentation of other community-based projects. The purpose of this work is to conserve, in the most expansive sense, the social practice of reverberation as a relational method, with each other and our shared environments.