Whether it’s about neuroscience, human rights, nightmares, or dinosaurs, Bruce Adolphe’s music “excites the ear and the mind.” (Chicago Sun Times) In his work as composer, author, lecturer, and performer, Bruce seeks to connect disparate ideas and disciplines, and to investigate diverse manifestations of human creativity, especially the musical imagination.

Known to millions of Americans as the Piano Puzzler on American Public Media’s Performance Today, Bruce is also the resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The author of several books on music, Bruce has been composer-in-residence and visiting scholar at the Brain and Creativity Institute in LA, Visiting Lecturer in the residential colleges at Yale, a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, Distinguished Composer-in-Residence at Mannes College of Music, and on the faculties of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and Juilliard. Bruce is a Steinway Artist.

New Books

Latest News

• Bruce Adolphe’s newest book, Dreaming and Thinking in Music: Exercises for Exploring Inspiration and Imagination in Musical Creativity will be published in September 2025 by Oxford University Press. Composer Reena Esmail wrote the Foreword. On the back cover, Yo-Yo Ma wrote the following: “Bruce Adolphe poses fundamental questions of inspiration and imagination. How does the subconscious affect our life decisions, our artistic output? Can imagination be taught? How do dreams become creation? And in his answers, he puts his finger on the beginnings of the human creative impulse. It’s a stunning achievement.”

• On June 2nd and 3rd, the ensemble Accordo will play the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s Thakla, Vilomah, Shakul (Bereavement) for String Octet. Accordo is a string ensemble composed of present and former principal string players of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra. The concerts are presented by The Schubert Club of St. Paul. Both concerts take place in Minneapolis. (See https://schubert.org/event/accordo-monday-june-2-2025/)

• Clarinetist Anthony McGill will perform the world premiere of Bruce Adolphe’s Marlboro Moon with the composer at the piano. The piece is inspired by McGill’s photograph of the moon taken at the Marlboro Music Festival. The concert is part of the Meet the Music! series for family audiences in Alice Tully, presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. March 15, 2026 at 2pm.

• At the invitation of Pireeni Sundaralingam, Bruce visited University College, Oxford, England, in February 2024 where he presented a workshop on creativity and imagination in connection with his new book Visions and Decisions (Cambridge, 2023) and his book The Mind’s Ear (Oxford, third edition 2021). His new work for chorus and cello, Lot’s Wives, a setting of a poem by Pireeni Sundaralingam, was premiered by The Chapel Choir of University College, Oxford, and members of the Martlet Voices, with cellist Richard Tunnicliffe, conducted by Giles Underwood, Director of Music.

• The world premiere of Dreaming and Thinking for piano, string quartet, and double bass, was performed in Porto, Portugal, at the Teatro Nacional. Bruce gave a pre-concert talk that combined a discussion of Dreaming and Thinking and ideas from his new book Visions and Decisions (Cambridge, 2023).

• Mobile Opera performed Let Freedom Sing: the story of Marian Anderson in February 2023. The one-act opera has a libretto by Carolivia Herron. It was directed and conducted by Scott Wright with Allanda Small as Marian Anderson.

• The third edition of The Mind’s Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination for Performers, Composers, and Listeners is available, published by Oxford University Press. The New Third Edition offers 34 new exercises inspired by improv comedy, hip-hop sampling and loops, robots and AI, and Bruce’s widely popular Piano Puzzler series. Amazon

• Secrets of Creativity: What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal, was published by Oxford University Press on September 23, 2019, has a chapter by Bruce Adolphe called The Musical Imagination: Mystery and Method in Musical Composition. OUP