About the Program
Meet the Music: Inspector Pulse Takes His Pulse!
A Note from Inspector Pulse:
As a New Yorker, I tend to walk really fast everywhere I go. By the time people say hi to me on the street I am already three blocks away.
The musical word for how fast or slow we walk — or sing or play an instrument — is tempo. My personal tempo is usually vivace (lively) or allegro (quickly, briskly) or presto (speedy!). I have even been known to eat breakfast prestissimo (super speedy), which is probably not such a healthy habit, and I should eat more slowly, more like the tempo Adagio. I never eat fast food, but I eat fast anyway, so the food can be slow.
All these tempo words are Italian. The first time I went to Italy, I was surprised to see the word Adagio printed on a sign in front of a garage. It meant to drive slowly, but I thought I was supposed to sing a song slowly, or maybe walk slowly. People stared at me as I walked past the garage so slowly that they thought I was a master of Tai Chi. As soon as I passed the garage, I resumed walking presto.
When it comes to performing music, there is usually a tempo that suits the piece, a speed that sounds right — not too fast, not too slow, but JUST RIGHT. Playing a piano piece super-fast does not mean you are a great pianist, especially if the piece is supposed to be Andante (strolling) or Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace, which either means “quickly and cheerful, but not to fast” or “a pizza with extra cheese but no pepperoni”. I once ordered a pizza that way in a restaurant, and they brought me a recording of Brahms’s Violin Concerto. It was delicious.
In today’s show, I will investigate tempi (plural of tempo) and I hope to discover the meaning of my own name, Pulse. I know it has something to do with music, with life, and maybe with pizza.
Yours,
Inspector Pulse
BRUCE ADOLPHE, Inspector Pulse
LLEWELLYN SÁNCHEZ-WERNER, piano
KATE ARNDT, violin
TERRY SWEENEY, marimba
Ruth Crawford Seeger Piano Study in Mixed Accents (1930)
Johann Sebastian Bach Suite No. 1 in G Major for Cello, BWV 1007 (arr. for marimba) (c. 1720)
Prélude
Béla Bartók from Mikrokosmos for Piano, BB 105 (1926–39)
Vol. VI, No. 149: Six dances in Bulgarian rhythm (2)
Vol. VI, No. 152: Six dances in Bulgarian rhythm (5)
Vol. VI, No. 153: Six dances in Bulgarian rhythm (6)
Béla Bartók Romanian Folk Dances for Violin and Piano, BB 68 (arr. Zoltán Székely) (1915, arr. 1925–26)
Pe loc (In One Spot)
Poarga româneasca (Romanian Polka)
Maruntel (Fast Dance)
Joseph Schwantner Velocities for Marimba (1990, rev. 2007)
Astor Piazzolla Histoire du Tango for Violin and Marimba (1986)
Night Club, 1960
Bruce Adolphe Inspector Pulse’s Pulse Piece (2015)
About the Artists
When he was a child Bruce Adolphe watched both Victor Borge and Leonard Bernstein on TV, and after seeing them, he began “playing piano” on the breakfast table and cracking jokes with a Danish accent. Having no choice, his parents bought him a toy piano, at which Bruce pretended to be Schroeder of the Peanuts cartoons. Soon after the toy piano was pecked apart by the family parakeet, Bruce’s parents purchased a real piano and a larger bird. By age ten, Bruce was composing music,and no one has been able to stop him since. As a “tween,” Bruce studied piano, clarinet, guitar, bass, and—as a teen—the bassoon. All this time, he wrote music and improvised accompaniments to everything that happened around him, as if life were a movie in need of a score. His favorite summers were spent at the Kinhaven Music School, and he loved his Saturdays at the Juilliard School’s Pre-College Division. Today, Bruce spends his time composing chamber music, playing the piano, and performing in concerts for people like you. He lives right around the corner on the Upper West Side with his wife, pianist Marija, his daughter Katja, and his opera-and-jazz-singing parrot PollyRhythm, the same bird he has had since he was 10 years old. Bruce performs weekly on public radio’s Performance Today, playing his Piano Puzzlers (familiar tunes in the styles of the great masters) and you can catch that show on WQXR or on iTunes, or as a podcast from American Public Media. Many great musicians have performed Bruce’s music, including Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Joshua Bell, the Brentano Quartet, and over 60 symphony orchestras around the world, and of course lots of amazing players right here at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where Bruce has been making music since 1992. Bruce writes books, too! You can find his book on his website (bruceadolphe.net). Bruce has loved playing piano since he was 6 years old, and today he is a Steinway Artist, which means the piano is either a Steinway or no way will he play it!
Llewellyn Sánchez-Werner, it seems, loved the piano since before he was born because by two and a half he gleefully began lessons with local teacher Mrs. Ludwig (alas, no relation to Beethoven). Living on the beach meant that the sand could be Llewellyn’s gigantic writing board. Every day he played on the beach with his mom and with a stick brought in by the tide, drew staves and notes, jumping from one note to another rapidly learning to read music. With laughter and fun, by age three Llewellyn was as prolific reading music as he was reading prose. At age five he enrolled as a full time college student, and at age six he began performing as soloist with orchestras and hasn’t stopped since, performing at fantastic venues around the world! It was colossal fun performing for Presidents Obama and Biden at the White House and for the Presidents and Prime Ministers of Mexico, Rwanda, Israel, and Singapore. After starting his Bachelor’s at Juilliard at 14 and his Master’s there at 18, Llewellyn finished his Artist Diploma at Yale. He was jogging in Central Park when he found out he received the Gilmore Young Artist Award, an honor awarded to “the most promising American pianists of the new generation,” and jogs more frequently now in the hopes of getting similar calls. Llewellyn is exclusively represented by Epstein Fox Performances. For more, please visit llewellynsanchezwerner.com.
Meet Kate Arndt, a violinist who loves making music and traveling all over the world! Kate grew up in Boston and started playing the violin when she was just 6 years old. She went to a music school called the New England Conservatory of Music, where she learned from a great teacher named Miriam Fried. Now, she’s studying for a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Yale with another amazing teacher, Ani Kavafian. Kate has played at famous places like Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She’s even traveled to Europe to perform with other talented musicians! Kate loves playing in different music groups, especially when she gets to play with her friends. When she’s not making music, Kate loves skiing in the mountains of Colorado, where she lives most of the year and plays as a Principal violinist of the Colorado Symphony.
Percussionist Terry Sweeney started his musical journey playing on pots and pans in his parents’ kitchen when he was young. When he was eight years old, he started playing an actual drum set and he has loved music ever since. Now, Terry plays music all over the world—from concertos with the Colorado Symphony and Albany Symphony, to chamber music with his group Sandbox Percussion in Paris. He’s even been nominated for two GRAMMY® awards! Terry also loves teaching young musicians; he teaches at The New School’s College of Performing Arts and the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory. Outside of music, Terry enjoys playing with his golden retriever and running long distances.
