“Bruce Adolphe reveals a deep sense of humanity and spirit in his extraordinary music.”
Meet the Music! presents THE KING, THE CAT, AND THE FIDDLE Story by Yehudi Menuhin and Daniel Hope; Music by Bruce Adolphe. Alice Tully Hall
VOICES FOR PEACE ‘
Lot’s Wives for chorus and solo cello, poem by Pireeni Sundaralingam; Premiere February 3rd, by The Chapel Choir, University College, Oxford, conducted by Giles Underwood, Director of Music.
An evening of music and readings reflecting on the impact of war and the hope for peace. The concert will feature Univ’s Chapel Choir as well as the professional ensemble, Martlet Voices. The singers will be joined by cellist, Richard Tunnicliffe and led by Giles Underwood, Univ’s Director of Music. The central work will be the world premiere of Lot’s Wives by celebrated American composer, Bruce Adolphe. This piece uses text from the poem of the same name by Univ’s Poet Laureate, Pireeni Sundaralingam (1986, Experimental Psychology).
There will also be music by Richard Rodney Bennett, C H H Parry, Herbert Howells, Janet Wheeler and Sasha Johnson Manning. The readings will include poems by the College Poet Laureate and members of the College community.
Violinist Sharon Roffman will be the soloist in the work she premiered in 2015, I WIll Not Remain Silent, Bruce Adolphe’s violin concerto inspired by the life of Joachim Prinz. The first movement is set in Nazi Germany; the second movement is set in America during the 1960s Civil Rights movement. The Texarkana Symphony Orchestra will be conducted by Philip Mann.
Composed for David and Wu Han in 1998, Couple has stayed in their repertoire. The program also includes the Debussy Sonata, Shostakovich Sonata Op.40, and Dvorak’s Piano Quartet in E-Flat, Op.87 with Richard Lin and Timothy Rideout. See Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center website for tickets or call Tully Hall Box Office.
Composed in 1998 for David and Wu Han, Couple has stayed in their repertoire, and is featured on this season’s tour. Tully performance on January 28.
Memory Believes (a requiem) , composed in memory of Jonathan Adolphe (1952-2022), will receive its first performance December 3rd at 4pm presented by the Parlance Chamber Concerts series at West Side Presbyterian Church • 6 South Monroe Street, Ridgewood, NJ The performers are the Brentano String Quartet and the Antioch Chamber Ensemble (choir). Texts by Emily Dickinson, Ethan Canin, and William Faulkner.
Maestro Antonio Planelles Gallego will conduct the Oldenburgisches Staatsorchester 18 performances of The Purple Palace at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater, Oldenburg, Germany. There will be abstract art designed by Georgios Kolios to illustrate the story. Commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, which premiered the work and toured it to Europe and Asia, The Purple Palace story is by Louise Gikow. It tells the story of Princess Purple who banishes all other colors from the land of Chromatica. Everything goes wrong and eventually all the colors flood back in to make it right.
Guillermo Figueroa conducts Adolphe’s Carnival of the Creatures at Music in the Mountains
The King, the Cat, and the Fiddle was commissioned by Daniel Hope, who gave the world premiere and subsequent European performances with the Zürich Chamber Orchestra. With a story by Daniel’s father, Christopher Hope, in collaboration with Yehudi Menuhin, The King, the Cat, and the Fiddle is a fun tale about a king who learns of the joy and power of music from the clever castle cat. The score by Bruce Adolphe features a solo violin, to be performed by Kelly Hall-Tompkins, and a string ensemble plus piano. Also on the program: Bruce’s The Nightingale. for solo violin (Kelly) and narrator. Bruce will narrate both stories.
Off the Hook Arts Festival 2023: Visions and Decisions — Bruce Adolphe’s new book provides the focus of our 2023 summerfest with 3 concerts and a book talk.
Bruce’s new book Visions and Decisions: Imagination and Technique in Music Composition was published in February 2023 by Cambridge University Press as part of the Elements Series on Imagination and Creativity. To attend the book talk on April 25th at 6:30 in the Rose Studio of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, click here: http://tracking.wordfly.com/view?sid=MTY0NV8yOTA2XzQyMDhfNzIwMA
Bruce Adolphe as Inspector Pulse, Alice Tully Hall, 2023.
Bruce Adolphe, Artistic Director
Jephta Bernstein, Executive Director, Founder
This summer’s festival is called Dreaming and Thinking, focusing on the methods and mysteries of creativity in music, writing, and science. Musicians: pianists Marija Stroke and Michael Brown; violinists Kelly Hall-Tompkins, Deborah Buck, Kristin Lee, and Alice Ivy-Pemberton; violist Phillip Stevens; cellists Matthew Zalkind, Alice Yoo, Mihai Marica, and Käthe Jarka; and French hornist Carolyn Landis Kunicki.
Speakers: poet and scientist Pireeni Sundaralingam; scientist Scott Denning; author Benjamin Erlich; filmmaker Tristan Cook; and Bruce Adolphe.
See the website of Off the Hook Arts in Fort Collins Colorado for concert programs and speaker topics.
Scored for the Da Capo Chamber Players (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano), Portraits is a series of tributes to the memories of musicians who were close to me, as well as to the players of Da Capo. The portraits are of: Nicholas Maw; Milton Babbitt; David Golub; George Perle; Laura Flax.
For the composers, I incorporated aspects of their musical personalities into their tributes; for the tribute to pianist David Golub, I created a portrait based on a Schubert impromptu that he frequently played as an encore; for the clarinetist Laura Flax, who was a longtime member of Da Capo, I composed a movement in which the clarinet is the soloist, in an intimate meditation that brings the entire work to a close.
This is a deeply personal project, but one that I hope will speak to the larger musical community, many of whom who knew and loved these musicians.
Bruce Adolphe
FABIO LUISI conducts
ANGEL BLUE soprano
TAYLOR RAVEN mezzo-soprano
ISSACHAH SAVAGE tenor
SOLOMAN HOWARD bass-baritone
DALLAS SYMPHONY CHORUS – JOSHUA HABERMANN director
BRUCE ADOLPHE Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt! (This Kiss to the Whole World!) | DALLAS PREMIERE
BEETHOVEN Symphony No. 9, “Choral”
Bruce Adolphe is a composer, educator, performer and author whose “original compositions convey a compelling voice, high craft, authenticity, communicative immediacy and substance” (Gramophone).
Performances: May 12, 13, 14 at 7:30; May 15 at 3 pm. See website for tickets.
Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto will be performed by the Orquesta Filarmónica in the beautiful Nezahualcoyotl Hall in Mexico City. 6pm start. One hour concert.
ROCO (River Oaks Chamber Orchestra) plays the premiere of Study in Solitude featuring Alecia Lawyer, oboe and the ROCO string section. LIVESTREAMED from the Holocaust Museum in Houston.
Study in Solitude is about the separation from friends and family during the pandemic, and about the sense of isolation experienced around the world.
Daniel Hope as violin soloist and narrator
For 2 violins, viola, 2 cellos. Commissioned by a consortium of music festivals including Salt Bay Chamberfest to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the work’s title comes from Ethan Canin’s novel A Doubter’s Almanac: “Are there not a thousand forms of sorrow? Is the sorrow of death the same as the sorrow of knowing the pain in a child’s future?”
Musical portraits in memory of Nicholas Maw, Milton Babbitt, George Perle, David Golub, and Laura Flax. Commissioned by the Da Capo Chamber Players for their 50th Anniversary.
PROGRAM:
Haydn: Quartet opus 71 no. 2
Bach: Contrapunctus no. 2 from Art of Fugue
Bruce Adolphe: ContraDictions (inspired by Contrapunctus no. 2)
Steven Mackey: ‘Lude (interwoven with Contrapunctus no. 11)
Schubert: Cello Quintet
Michael Kannen, cello
Bach: Contrapunctus no. 2 from Art of Fugue
Bruce Adolphe: ContraDictions (inspired by Contrapunctus no. 2)
Steven Mackey: ‘Lude (interwoven with Contrapunctus no. 11)
Mendelssohn: Quartet opus 80
Start:October 23 @ 7:30 pm
World Premiere of Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt (This Kiss to the Whole World)
Commissioned by The Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Bravo!Vail
DALLAS SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Fabio Luisi, conductor
Alessio Bax, piano
B ADOLPHE Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt! (“This Kiss to the Whole World!”)
SAINT-SAËNS Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22
SCHUMANN Symphony No. 4 in D minor, Op. 120
The Savannah Music Festival and American Public Media present Bruce Adolphe and Fred Child in a concert of Piano Puzzlers.
Don’t miss this opportunity to participate in an episode of “Piano Puzzler,” the hugely popular weekly American Public Media (APM) program hosted by Fred Child as part of APM’s Performance Today. A proven hit among Savannah Music Festival-goers in 2014, “Piano Puzzler” features composer, scholar, author and educator Bruce Adolphe at the piano, challenging the audience to identify popular tunes performed in the style of classical composers. Adolphe is a renowned composer whose multifaceted career includes concurrent positions as resident lecturer and director of family concerts for The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York; composer-in-residence at the Brain and Creativity Institute, LA; founding creative director of The Learning Maestros education company; and artistic director of Off the Hook Arts Festival, Colorado. Child’s CD reviews appear on All Things Considered and his classical music reports appear on Morning Edition and Weekend Edition. He is a contributor to Billboard, a commentator for BBC Radio 3 and host for Live From Lincoln Center.
Water Songs — music by Bruce Adolphe; poems by Katherine Barrett Swett, Emily Dickinson, Shakespeare, James Joyce, Rumi, and statistics about water.
Join CMS for its return to the live stage at Lincoln Center with a program that spans continents. As a prelude to Dvořák’s beloved Piano Quintet, we will hear quintessentially American music, including ever-popular Gershwin and the world premiere of a new song cycle by Bruce Adolphe, composed for soprano Angel Blue, well-known to Lincoln Center audiences from her recent performances as Bess in the Metropolitan Opera’s production of Porgy and Bess.
Artists: Angel Blue, soprano; Bryan Wagorn, piano; Wu Han, piano; Kristin Lee, violin, Danbi Um, violin; Paul Neubauer, viola; David Finckel, cello
PROGRAM
SCHUBERT “Quartettsatz” (Quartet Movement) in C Minor, D 703
BRUCE ADOLPHE “Are There Not a Thousand Forms of Sorrow?” (2019 CMNW Commissioned World Premiere)
SCHUBERT Octet for Winds and Strings in F Major, D. 803, Op. 166
Program:
SCHUBERT “Quartettsatz” (Quartet Movement) in C Minor, D 703
BRUCE ADOLPHE “Are There Not a Thousand Forms of Sorrow?” (2019 CMNW Commissioned World Premiere)
SCHUBERT Octet for Winds and Strings in F Major, D. 803, Op. 166
The Dark, Coiled Intensity of f Minor
Bach Prelude in f minor from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier
Beethoven Quartet in f minor, Op. 95
Bruce Adolphe Coiled (inspired by Beethoven’s Op. 95) (2017)
Shostakovich Quartet No. 11 in f minor
Mendelssohn Quartet in f minor, Op. 80
The program starts with a Bach Prelude that introduces f minor as a key that admits little light, closed in and dense. In Op. 95 (“Serioso”), Beethoven wrote a work that is compact and brutal. When the Brentano Quartet approached Bruce Adolphe to write a work inspired by the Beethoven he answered immediately: “Opus 95: so many nuggets of genius: the unhinged rhythmic knots, the scales off the cliff's edge, the muttering, the gnashing of molars!” The result is his new work, “Coiled,” written for this program. That coiled intensity also informs Shostakovich’s Eleventh Quartet in f minor (Beethoven’s f minor is also his eleventh), that compressed, eloquent masterpiece. And it is no coincidence that Mendelssohn’s final quartet, written in the anguished aftermath of his beloved sister’s death, refers in key and affect directly to this seminal Beethoven work.
The Dark, Coiled Intensity of f Minor
Bach Prelude in f minor from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier
Beethoven Quartet in f minor, Op. 95
Bruce Adolphe Coiled (inspired by Beethoven’s Op. 95) (2017)
Shostakovich Quartet No. 11 in f minor
Mendelssohn Quartet in f minor, Op. 80
The program starts with a Bach Prelude that introduces f minor as a key that admits little light, closed in and dense. In Op. 95 (“Serioso”), Beethoven wrote a work that is compact and brutal. When the Brentano Quartet approached Bruce Adolphe to write a work inspired by the Beethoven he answered immediately: “Opus 95: so many nuggets of genius: the unhinged rhythmic knots, the scales off the cliff's edge, the muttering, the gnashing of molars!” The result is his new work, “Coiled,” written for this program. That coiled intensity also informs Shostakovich’s Eleventh Quartet in f minor (Beethoven’s f minor is also his eleventh), that compressed, eloquent masterpiece. And it is no coincidence that Mendelssohn’s final quartet, written in the anguished aftermath of his beloved sister’s death, refers in key and affect directly to this seminal Beethoven work.
The Dark, Coiled Intensity of f Minor
Bach Prelude in f minor from Book 2 of the Well-Tempered Clavier
Beethoven Quartet in f minor, Op. 95
Bruce Adolphe Coiled (inspired by Beethoven’s Op. 95) (2017)
Shostakovich Quartet No. 11 in f minor
Mendelssohn Quartet in f minor, Op. 80
The program starts with a Bach Prelude that introduces f minor as a key that admits little light, closed in and dense. In Op. 95 (“Serioso”), Beethoven wrote a work that is compact and brutal. When the Brentano Quartet approached Bruce Adolphe to write a work inspired by the Beethoven he answered immediately: “Opus 95: so many nuggets of genius: the unhinged rhythmic knots, the scales off the cliff's edge, the muttering, the gnashing of molars!” The result is his new work, “Coiled,” written for this program. That coiled intensity also informs Shostakovich’s Eleventh Quartet in f minor (Beethoven’s f minor is also his eleventh), that compressed, eloquent masterpiece. And it is no coincidence that Mendelssohn’s final quartet, written in the anguished aftermath of his beloved sister’s death, refers in key and affect directly to this seminal Beethoven work.
