About Me
Clarinetist, Educator, Entrepreneur
Clarinetist Adella Carlson is a performer and educator passionate about increasing the social relevance and accessibility of contemporary classical music. Actively involved in arts administration, education, and performance, Adella currently holds positions as the UNCG School of Music Administrative Assistant and the Ensemble Manager for the Greensboro Symphony Youth Orchestras, in addition to teaching a private studio of clarinet and piano students.
Equally at home in solo, chamber, and large ensemble contexts, Adella is a member of the Chaos Incarné Clarinet Trio and the Piedmont Wind Symphony, and plays regularly with orchestras throughout North Carolina. As a founding member of the Chaos Incarné Trio, which exists to commission and perform works by underrepresented composers, Adella has been invited to play at the American Single Reed Summit, the inaugural HERo Conference, ICA Low Clarinet Conference, and Clarinetfest. Chaos Incarné was one of the first ensembles to receive the ICA's Loren Kitt Memorial Award, which is given to emerging ensembles demonstrating excellence in chamber music.
As a soloist, Adella enjoys commissioning, performing, and recording new music. Most recently, she commissioned Trojaborg 2 (Ukrainian) (2024) by Svitlana Azarova to raise funds for music students in Ukraine, and premiered this piece at Clarinetfest 2024 in Dublin, Ireland. A 500-hour registered yoga teacher, Adella offers yoga classes for musicians as well as incorporating techniques for maintaining physical and mental wellness into her music pedagogy. Adella’s primary teachers include Christopher Howard, Andy Hudson, and Anthony Taylor.
Adella earned her MM in Clarinet Performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her Bachelor of Arts in Music Performance from Eastern Connecticut State University, graduating summa cum laude from the University Honors Program. As a student at UNCG, Adella was principal clarinetist of the University Symphony Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, a Student Manager in the Harold Schiffman Music Library, the Ensemble Manager for the School of Music, and an intern for the Raleigh-based ensemble earspace. During her time at Eastern, Adella won the New England Intercollegiate Band Festival Solo Competition as well as receiving multiple awards from the music department and university, including the 2019 Undergraduate Creative Activity Fellowship and the 2020 Outstanding Honors Thesis Award for her project, “Leonard Bernstein and the Twentieth Century Crisis of Faith.”
Adella has spent summers at Brevard Music Center and the Philadelphia International Music Festival, studying with Steve Cohen and Ricardo Morales, and interning for the Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s Talcott Mountain Music Festival and the International Clarinet Association.
