Youth Music Monterey alum Mariam Adam returns to perform a local composer’s piece at Monterey Symphony.

Clarinetist Mariam Adam is a poster child for the quality of music education available to youth in Monterey County. This Monterey High School graduate came up through Youth Music Monterey and other programs.

These days Adam is an internationally known chamber musician, a soloist and a former member of the Grammy-nominated woodwind quintet, Imani Winds. She shares her time between Nashville and Paris, but Monterey is still a second home.

“I was raised with the rhythm of the waves,” she says. “I never thought I could leave this rhythm behind.”

Adam was born to a Mexican mother and an Egyptian father, who taught at Defense Language Institute and Middlebury Institute. They both loved music; mom likes to listen to Julio Iglesias, and dad has a diverse collection of vinyl, from Shostakovich to Harry Belafonte and The Beatles. Growing up, Adam was encouraged to pick up not one, but two instruments. Until she left at age 21 for New York City with her clarinet, she happily played drums – including with the Monterey All-Star Jazz band at the Monterey Jazz Festival.

“I would like to bring people’s attention to music education in schools,” she says. “It can enhance for a lifetime. ”

While performing with Imani Winds in New York, Adam met Grammy-winning composer John Wineglass. During a conversation they discovered they share a hometown, Wineglass being an educator at CSU Monterey Bay. They immediately decided they should work together and Wineglass came up with the idea of a clarinet concerto, written just for Adam.

The result is a 12-minute piece titled Democracy that “tackles heroism and politics head on,” according to the Monterey Symphony, which was a natural choice when it came to where and with whom to premiere the work.

“His writing is very cinematic,” Adam says about Wineglass, whose piece will be played along with compositions by Beethoven, Frank Zappa and Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, during two Sunset Center concerts coming up this weekend, part of Monterey Symphony’s 80th season.

MONTEREY SYMPHONY: Wineglass, Zappa, Beethoven. 7:30pm Saturday, April 18; 3pm Sunday, April 19. Sunset Center, San Carlos and 9th, Carmel. $12-$90. (831) 646-8511, montereysymphony.org. Free pre-concert lectures: 6:30pm Saturday, April 18 and 2pm Sunday, April 19.