Ondřej Adámek was born in 1979 in Prague.

He graduated from the composition department of the Academy of Music in Prague in 2004 and in 2007, from the Conservatoire National Supérieur in Paris, where he also studied orchestration, electroacoustics, conducting and Indian music.
He came to Berlin in 2010 as a guest of the DAAD’s Berlin Artists-in-Residence Programme, where he has been living ever since.

Fascinated by other cultures, he assimilates all the aesthetics he encounters. As a teenager, he played the organ, tablas and flutes, then discovered Noh theater, Bunraku and Zen Buddhist rituals. He immersed himself in flamenco in Spain and developed specific playing techniques, made instruments, and learned about Hinduism in India, as well as in Bali where he studied gamelan. His works reveal all these influences, marking them with a specific sound color which, combined with a powerful rhythm and a solid formal architecture, creates a personal music not exempt from dramaturgy.

His music was awarded the Synthèse Prize (Bourges 2002), Metamorphose (Brussels 2002, 2004), First Prize of Hungarian Radio, the Brandenburg Biennale prize (2006), the Prix Hervé-Dugardin – SACEM (2009), the Grand Prix Tansman (Lodz 2010), the Prix George Enesco 2011, and others. In 2014-2015, Adamek is fellow of the Academie de France, Villa Medici in Rome.

 He has received commissions for orchestral, choir, ensemble, and vocal works, as well as music for instruments and electronics from prestigious ensembles, orchestras and festivals of contemporary music in Europe, such as Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra with Mezzo-Soprano Magdalena Kozena, Isabelle Faust and Sinfonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunk, Deutsches Sinfonieorchester Berlin, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Klangforum Wien, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, Diotima string quartet, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, Agora festival, Donaueschingen festival, Witten festival, Warsaw Automn, Les Musiques festival – Marseille.

Ondřej Adámek is also conductor and conducted his opera Alles Klappt in the festival Biennale Munich, also his opera Seven Stones in the opera festival in Aix-en-Provence. In 2018 Ondřej Adámek founded the vocal ensemble N.E.S.E.V.E.N, for which he also develops his own compositions and interdisciplinary programmes in cooperation with other ensembles. In his work as a conductor and leader of vocal ensembles, Adámek is interested in the authenticity and originality of the voice, as well as questions of movement, gesture and theatricality on stage.
Always interested in new forms of expression and sound colours, Adamek also develops, with Carol Jimenez, his own  polyform instrument activated by air “Airmachine”.