A native of New York City and the son of a studio musician, ADAM GORGONI spent many of his earliest days in recording studios absorbing diverse styles and techniques of music making. Study of the classical guitar soon led to jazz, rock, symphonic writing, and beyond. This eclectic musical upbringing allows him to combine the best of the acoustic/orchestral tradition with the ever-expanding sonic palette of the digital age.
ADAM is a graduate of Harvard University and has studied composition and orchestration at Manhattan School of Music, Eastman Conservatory, and production/arranging at the Berklee College of Music.
He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife, Grammy nominated songwriter Shelly Peiken.
Check out Adam’s debut novel
Scheduled Release:
October 20, 2026
Burned-out journalist Brando Riley is in SoCal to settle his late aunt's estate and cover a massive oil spill. While there, he meets a young champion swimmer at a local bar—she's found floating in the harbor the next day. When her drowning is dismissed as an accident and Riley unearths a corporate cover-up, he becomes convinced the two are somehow connected.
“Gorgoni’s HARD WATER is hard-boiled at its best.”—Reed Farrel Coleman, NY TIMES bestselling author
"Despite his claims that "I'm not a tough guy...I'm not a gritty shamus or a grizzled cop, or a forensic psychologist," Brando Riley, an environmental journalist in Adam Gorgoni's stunning debut novel Hard Water, becomes a little bit of all of these things, and for that the reader should be eternally grateful. From page one, we're hooked, as Gorgoni skillfully weaves the mystery of what happened to a beautiful, local bartender into Riley's investigation of an oil spill off the California coast.”--Charles Salzberg, 3-time Shamus Award nominee
Projects
