Adam Karelin

Executive and Artistic Director
Principal Conductor, Riverside Youth Orchestra

Adam Karelin is an arts leader, conductor, and composer who makes music and empowers others to make music. He currently serves as the Executive and Artistic Director of the Riverside Arts Academy.

At RAA, Karelin has overseen the expansion of programs to provide music education to over 500 students. Under his leadership, RAA has strengthened its existing programs, launched a new classical guitar program, and is administering a National Endowment for the Arts research program.

Karelin’s music has been performed from Los Angeles to Helsinki, including premieres by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Thornton Symphony Orchestra, Thornton Edge, Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra, New World Symphony Fellows, the Hear Now Festival, and others. In 2019, his work for large orchestra, Constructs, received the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Award. Karelin also received the New Music for Orchestra prize at USC for his guitar concerto, Barcarolle.

As a composer, Karelin explores his identity as a child of the Ukrainian-Jewish diaspora. He is the founding artistic director of the Slava Festival, which debuted in April 2023 with the Thornton Edge ensemble, in partnership with Stand with Ukraine Foundation and the USC Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. Edge premiered his multi-movement oratorio, Forget your Past, as part of the festival.

Karelin previously served as the Music Director of the Student Symphony Orchestra of USC. During his tenure, he brought the organization into collaboration with animators, choreographers, and composers from around the world, receiving the Mehrle Service Award in 2021. His work was driven by his belief that music can bring people together and tear past traditional constraints of genre. Through his work, the orchestra diversified its repertoire, championing music by underrepresented composers. Karelin has also served as a conducting fellow at the Aspen Music Festival and at the Los Angeles Youth Orchestra.

Karelin holds an M.S. in Arts Leadership and a B.M. in composition with a minor in linguistics from USC. He graduated valedictorian and was named the USC Thornton School of Music’s Outstanding Graduate for both of his degrees. His mentors and teachers have included Larry J. Livingston, Kenneth J. Foster, Donald Crockett, Robert Spano, Andrew Norman, and Brett Banducci.

In his spare time, Karelin roasts coffee beans, hikes, and reads up on the latest linguistics research.