Alumna Spotlight: Martina Adams (Horn ’23)
“My favorite thing about being a student at Curtis is working with the faculty members. They really care about the students, and they devote a lot of time and energy in us.”
Award-winning horn player and recent Curtis alumna Martina Adams (’23) began playing her instrument at age eight in her elementary school band. The Philadelphia native entered Curtis in 2019 and studied horn with Jeffrey Lang and Jennifer Montone as the Thomas and Patricia Vernon Fellow.
Ms. Adams’s first musical influences were her parents and two older sisters, each of whom is a professional musician—her eldest sister is a baroque oboist, and the other sister is a cellist. In high school, while she was attending the Philadelphia International Music Festival, she performed Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36. Weeks later, she took part in Curtis Summerfest and played the composer’s Romeo and Juliet overture, which prompted an immediate purchase of a recording of Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, featuring both of those pieces. It was the first symphony she fell in love with and one of the key moments as a young musician in which she knew this was the career path she had to follow.
Ms. Adams has toured Italy as principal horn with the Philadelphia All-City Orchestra and has performed with the multi-national classical crossover vocal group Il Divo. Among her many honors are the Emily and Arthur Crosby and the Florencia M. Mack awards, as well as the Millard E. Gladfelter Scholarship. She plays the piano for relaxation and mental stimulation, but her favorite thing to do in Philadelphia is to walk about and look at the city’s historic houses. In her spare time, she reads and learns German, likes arranging music for horns that she records and posts to her YouTube channel, and enjoys playing standard horn repertoire.
Photos of Martina Adams courtesy of Nichole MCH Photography.
