Margie Adam is currently an integrative counselor with a national practice. She carries with her a history as a lesbian feminist singer-songwriter-pianist and activist whose commitment to peace and justice shines powerfully through her songs, 40 years of performance, and her life-long involvement in progressive issues.
Born in Lompoc, California in 1947, Margie was raised by her father, a newspaper publisher in the small town, and her mother, a piano teacher in a household pulsing with politics and culture. She began playing the piano as soon as she could climb up on the piano bench. Her performance career was launched in 1973 at an open mic session at Kate Millett’s legendary Sacramento Women’s Music Festival.
From early celebrity as a singer-songwriter in the women's community, she developed the unique interplay of piano and voice, lyric and melody, of spirit and talk that is the unique theatre of Margie Adam. A composer as well as a songwriter, she introduced a special brand of pop-jazz solo piano music to audiences.
Singer, Songwriter, Composer, Activist
Margie's collaboration with Cris Williamson, Meg Christian and Holly Near in 1974 and 1975 resulted in the "An Evening of Women's Music" concert set which galvanized the growing movement, network and industry of Women's Music at a national level. Their music and interaction onstage generated an extraordinary woman-loving energy and feminist atmosphere which inspired others to organize concerts and music festivals like the Michigan Women's Music Festival. Meanwhile women's production companies were being formed which supported local and regional artists who identified with Women's Music.
A fifty-city tour, produced by Boo Price to promote Margie's first album Margie Adam Songwriter. culminated at the historic National Women’s Conference in Houston in 1977 where she performed “We Shall Go Forth!” with 10,000 women singing three-part harmony. The song was subsequently inducted into the Political History Division of the Smithsonian Museum.
In 1980, Margie released Naked Keys and uncovered an enthusiastic audience for solo piano music that continues today. That same year, Boo produced a national tour with her company, Women in Production, sponsored by National Women’s Political Caucus to raise funds for feminist candidates. "Naked Keys" became a soundbed choice for many of the most popular National Public Radio shows of the time.
The leadership of 80 national women’s organizations were among the sold-out crowd who attended Margie’s concert with Sweet Honey in the Rock and Malvina Reynolds produced by Women in Production at Constitution Hall hours before the 1982 ratification deadline of the Equal Rights Amendment. Her live album, We Shall Go Forth! (*link) was released that day.
After releasing her fourth album, a collection of her love songs entitled Here Is A Love Song, produced by Boo and Leslie Ann Jones, Margie came off the road in 1984 for a “Radical’s Sabbatical.” In 1990, convinced her career in music was complete, she accepted an invitation from Olivia Records to release The Best of Margie Adam as part of their Best of Women’s Music series. (Pleaides Records re-issued an updated version in 2005.)
Return From “A Radical’s Sabbatical“
In 1996, she recorded Soon and Again, her second solo piano recording, co-produced with Barbara Higbie. This endeavor inspired the THREE OF HEARTS national tour which she coordinated with solo pianists Liz Story and Barbara Higbie.
Margie gave her musical support to feminist bookstores in a 1998 tour organized to help draw attention to the indispensable services these women’s businesses provide.
She released an eighth recording, Avalon, in 2001 with Kerry Lobel as executive producer. This collection of vocal and instrumental music was her most revealing and contemplative work to date, with her passion for community taking center stage.
Margie’s interest in documenting women’s history and in particular the contributions of feminist lesbians, led her to join with Dee Mosbacher and Woman Vision Films as associate producer of “Radical Harmonies: A History of Women’s Music,” which premiered to enthusiastic audiences in 2002. She was also associate producer for “No Secret Anymore: The Times of Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon,” produced and directed by Joan Biren which premiered in 2003.
Margie launched a collaboration with Lauren Artress, founder of Veriditas, The World-Wide Labyrinth Project in 2002. The two debuted “At the Edge: A Conversation Between Seeker and Activist with Music and the Labyrinth” at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, California. This complex combination of conversation, song, storytelling, piano improvisation, labyrinth walk and discussion fascinated audiences across the United States in 2002-03.
2004 was a year when Margie focused more directly on political activism. In April, she was invited to kick off the March For Women’s Lives with a performance of “We Shall Go Forth!” in front of one million pro-choice people on the mall in Washington, DC. Later in the year, she helped produce fund-raisers and walked precincts in Florida for the John Kerry campaign.
The quiet hum of spirit that had always resonated in Margie Adam’s music surfaced full force in 2005 with her last release, PORTAL a meditative DVD featuring choreographed photography (taken by Margie) of Scotland’s ancient Callanish Stones accompanied by a haunting jazz soundtrack written and arranged by the composer herself. PORTAL, co-produced by Margie and Donna Korones, also includes a CD compilation of her contemplative solo piano music from her earlier recordings.
Margie took PORTAL on the road along with a 100-pount canvas labyrinth for a tour that included not only her performance but a labyrinth walk at the end of each concert, which she facilitated with the DVD's ancient stone circle imagery and soundtrack as accompaniment.
In August 2008, Margie joined friends, artists, activists and politicians at San Francisco's city hall rotunda to celebrate the life of Del Martin, lesbian feminist co-author of "Lesbian Woman" and wife of Phyllis Lyon, her partner in revolutionary frontline social change activism. This was Margie's final performance: providing solo piano "walk-in" music and later, singing "Woman of My Heart" to Phyllis as she sat in the front row. After this extraordinary community gathering, she simply stopped accepting concert invitations.
After two years spent traveling and "waiting for orders", Margie Adam entered a university graduate program and completed a PhD in Psychology. Working as an integrative counselor, she continues to engage others with her own particular therapeutic modality of healing and empowerment. From time to time, when opportunity arises for her to speak about Women's Music and culture, politics, or some other topic of interest, she will step up to the microphone…