By Jim O'Sullivan

Had he turned right out of his Columbia Road apartment building one day back in January and not turned left, Adam Hirsh might not be in Rhode Island today. Music sometimes will take you where you didn't know you could go.

But Hirsh did turn right on the sidewalk down the stairs from his Uphams Corner studio, and "just walked and walked and walked. And I just came across all these images that were beautiful in their own right, but just nasty." He saw chained-off playgrounds, scenic trees with rubbish in their branches. Beautiful and ugly.

And then sitting at his window one morning, sipping iced coffee, the 32-year-old Malibu native and assistant director of a camp for Boston teenagers, looked out on Dorchester's Old North Cemetery in Uphams Corner and saw the sunlight glinting off the headstones.

And this morning he is in Newport, Rhode Island, playing a piano and singing the words to "Beautiful Ugly," one of five finalists from across the country vying for the top spot in the Newport Folk Festival Talent Search.

"That's how I see things in life," Hirsh says. "The contrasts. Sort of like the yin and yang."

The singer-songwriter fronts The Hirsh Project, a fluid group of musicians performing Hirsh-written songs, but will be performing solo today and this weekend at what may be the nation's most prestigious folk music gathering. B.B. King, James Taylor, and Joan Baez have all thrilled at Newport. In 1965, Bob Dylan chose Newport as his stage to shake up the music world by plugging in and forsaking his acoustic roots. And Dylan returned last year, creating a stir industry-wide.

Hirsh hopes for a similar splash.

"This is the first time that I've been put in a situation that I can really attract people to what I'm doing," he says.

"I'm humble enough to admit that I need somebody to take my hand at this point."

He's looking for a producer, to hook up with a label, for the "break" that's a prerequisite for fame.

"It's things like this that get people looking."

And looking is what got Adam Hirsh to Rhode Island.

'I just went for it'

"I feel like Boston's not the best market for music. The industry's not looking to Boston for its next star. But the reason I stay in Boston is that I have something here that other songwriters don't have elsewhere, something inspirational. And that feeds me."

Hirsh, medium build with wavy hair and mutton-chop sideburns, is sitting in his spacious studio apartment, exposed brick, Oriental rugs, and contemporary art all around, joining a large keyboard, amplifier, and big-screen TV. It looks like an artist's space.

He's talking about the words in his music; he sees himself as a songwriter of folk and "folk-pop" tunes, " a vocalist and craftsman," rather than just a pianist, because he calls his ivory-tickling skills "somewhat limited." The graveyard across the street, a jaunt down Columbia, the lead story in a newscast - everyday things attract his pen.

He is trained extensively as a musician, a trumpeter for 15 years, good enough to win a full ride at the University of Southern California. Hirsh finished his undergraduate schooling at Boston University, then snagged a Master's in education from Tufts.

Education, he says, hooked him on Boston. After Tufts, he taught at a Bunker Hill alternative school for troubled teens.

Now, much of the "something inspirational" stems from his work at an academic day camp at Trinity Church in Copley Square, where he is an assistant director. The program - not faith-based, he notes - is designed for Boston kids heading into seventh grade, sometimes three dozen of them who learn math, language arts, and music in the morning, and then enjoy day camp life in the afternoon.

Hirsh says it's enriching, it's free, and it's a good time. And he works there.

His ties to the camp finagled him a key to a Boylston St. studio on a Saturday night a few weeks ago. He'd written a song "Beautiful and Ugly," and it seemed like a good contender for a talent search about which a friend's mother had alerted him.

He sat down at the piano, rolled tape, and "I just went for it.

"I've 'just went' for a lot of these songwriting competitions and stuff and never heard anything else," he says.

But a week or so later a static-blurred cell phone call clued him into the fact that he'd be taking Route 24 South this week on his way to sharing a stage with the biggest names in folk music.

Overtures

It's the life of a yet-to-be-discovered talent: waiting tables, teaching, gigging in clubs all over the city, and bouncing around apartments. Hirsh does them all, and an ownership change is nudging him out of the apartment he's enjoyed since January.

"This is great because, 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, I get some inspiration and I want to plug in and play, no one's going to complain," because other artists share the building, he says.

He found a carriage house in Ashmont Hill that he is eyeing for the middle of September.

When he's not writing or playing songs, Hirsh juggles bill-paying gigs as a waiter and his year-round post for the Trinity camp, which requires fund-raising, camper recruiting, staff hires, and all the other things that let him dive into his music when time allows.

"I recorded and produced my last album on my own," he says. "All the songs are mine. I just hustle the rest of the time."

The balance, the yin and yang, the perfect key. It will all be on stage, live and for all to see and hear, today in Newport, as Hirsh views for the top spot in the national contest.

"That's sort of either where this ride ends or it continues," Hirsh says.