Drummer, percussionist, composer, producer and educator Ernie Adams has been playing professionally since age 15. He has played, toured and/or recorded with artists including Ramsey Lewis, Stanley Turrentine, Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Williams, Patricia Barber, Dianne Reeves, James Moody, Rufus Reid, Joe Zawinul, Slide Hampton, Frank Morgan, Arturo Sandoval, Wycliff Gordon, Clark Terry, Pharoah Sanders, Ahmad Jamal, and others. Adams is a member of Akalibrio, an intellipop band and music production company. He also has jazz, funk, hip hop and worldbeat concerts and projects under his own name.
Adams appears on over 100 recordings and his performance and production credits include movie soundtracks and radio and television jingles. In particular, he performed and co-wrote the soundtrack, and appeared in, the 1995 motion picture A Family Thing starring Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones.
Adams studied jazz at North Texas State University and The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For over 15 years, he has tutored in the Chicago public schools. He is currently on the faculty at the University of Illinois-Chicago and provides instruction for Orbert Davis’ Music Alive program, The Jazz Institute of Chicago, Ravinia and the Music Institute of Chicago.