Jacob Adams is a composer and pianist Melissa Evans Tierra has known since their years together at the Cleveland Institute of Music, where both earned degrees in piano performance studying with Antonio Pompa-Baldi, alongside Melissa's husband, Chetan Tierra.

 

Adams went on to complete a Doctor of Musical Arts in piano performance and literature and a Master of Music in piano pedagogy at the University of Illinois, and has performed extensively throughout the Midwest and East Coast. He dedicated his Op. 37 Preludes, a set of seven technically demanding atonal works, to Melissa; she has learned and recorded two of them to date, with the remaining five planned for after her current Milani recording project.

 

An extremely prolific composer, Adams is also an avid ragtime musician who began writing his own rags in 1999 and has since composed more than 50, several of which have won the New Rag Contest; his catalog ranges from those rags and pieces for beginner and intermediate pianists to demanding atonal works like the Preludes written for Melissa.