Meet the Music! Musical Fairy Tales
What can music say—can a violin order a pizza? Join us for a fantastical journey as enchanting fairy tales from around the world are brought to life through music!
A Note About Fairy Tales and Music
Don’t you love beautifully illustrated storybooks? It’s amazing how much a picture can tell you! As they say, one picture is worth a thousand words. If you were an artist drawing pictures for the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, you could make the bears adorable, scary, funny, smart, silly, or even goofy just by the way you draw the expressions on their faces! You could also create elaborate, colorful backgrounds with crayons or paint or you could create simple, sketchy scenes with a pencil. The words would tell only the plot and your pictures would do so much more than that! Music can
also tell us much more than words. Sometimes I think a phrase of music or a melody is worth a zillion words!
When I composed the music for Goldilocks and the Three Bears, it made sense to me that because the bears are a family, using instruments from the same “family” would be just right. In music, we have the string family, the woodwind family, the brass family, the percussion family, the keyboard family, and you can find even more ways to group instruments into family units. Using the string family, I wrote Poppa Bear’s music for the cello, Mamma Bear’s music for the viola, and Baby Bear’s music for the violin. Then Goldilocks had to be a different kind of instrument, since she’s a human girl and not a bear. The oboe was just right. And I used the piano to portray the background scene and the overall mood, like in a drawing.
What other instruments could a composer use to tell the Goldilocks story? Do you think it would sound just right if we used woodwind instruments? Poppa Bear could be a bassoon, Mamma Bear a clarinet, and Baby Bear a flute or maybe a piccolo? Then Goldilocks could be a violin…or she could still be an oboe. What do you think? What about brass instruments for the story? (The brass family includes trumpet, French horn, trombone, and tuba, plus a few cousins of those instruments.)
Maybe after today’s concert, you will think about using music to tell a story, a story you make up yourself or a well-known fairy tale like Goldilocks. Give it a try!
Bruce Adolphe
About the Program
BRUCE ADOLPHE, Narrator
SAHUN SAM HONG, Piano
CLAIRE BOURG, Violin
LAURA LIU, Viola
MIHAI MARICA, Cello
MEGAN WOJTYLA, Oboe
ROBERT SCHUMANN (1810–1856)
Nicht schnell from Märchenbilder for Viola and Piano, Op. 113 (1851)
LEOŠ JANÁČEK (1854–1928)
Pohádka [Fairy Tale] for Cello and Piano (1910)
Con moto—Andante
Con moto—Adagio
Allegro
IGOR STRAVINKSY (1882–1971)
Berceuse from The Firebird
BRUCE ADOLPHE (b. 1955)
Goldilocks and the Three Bears, for narrator and ensemble
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!
Sahun Sam Hong was born in Seoul, Korea, and started playing piano when he was four years old. Piano was not his only instrument though, he also liked practicing cello and guitar for fun. When he was eight, he moved to the United States and when he was just 16, he graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in Piano Performance! Now, Sam plays music all over the world and he even arranges music too. His piano playing has won him many awards and his chamber music arrangements are toured throughout the country. When he isn’t playing piano, Sam loves drinking coffee, playing ping pong, and walking around the city. He also enjoys the company of his cat named Sebastian.
Claire Bourg picked up the violin when she was just five years old, and it was love at first note! Even though the violin was small like she was, it made a BIG sound that filled the room, and Claire couldn’t wait to learn more. As she grew up, so did her love for music. She practiced almost every day, went to music schools such as New England Conservatory, Curtis and Juilliard, and now she gets to perform on some of the most famous stages in the world like Carnegie Hall in New York City and concert halls all the way in Europe and Asia! One of Claire’s favorite things is playing music with friends. Chamber music is her passion, and she loves playing in ensembles through the Marlboro School of Music, Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players, and sometimes small orchestras like Orpheus among others! Claire also loves working with composers to bring brand-new music to life—like helping to tell a story no one’s ever heard before. Today, Claire plays a very special violin that was made in Italy a long time ago!
Laura Liu was born in Miami, Florida. She has two older brothers who both played string instruments. Laura started playing the piano when she was turning five years old, then started taking violin lessons to be like her brothers. At summer camp, she took a violin to viola class and fell in love with the beautiful warm sound of the viola. Laura now lives in New York City and attends The Juilliard School where she is the proud recipient of a Kovner Fellowship. At school she plays all types of classical music including solo music, orchestra music, and chamber music. Laura particularly loves playing chamber music because it is just like having a fun conversation with friends! Laura used to be shy and thought it was hard to speak in classes at school but found that as she has grown as a violist and a musician, she has been able to express herself easier in both words and music. Every summer is dedicated to studying chamber music: Laura has been all over the country from Maine to Virginia, from New Mexico to Florida, from New York to California. Now, Laura cannot go a day without listening and practicing music and is excited to share the joy that finding your voice in music brings!
Mihai Marica started playing the cello at age 7, moments after receiving a quarter-sized cello as his birthday present. He had asked for it three years earlier according to his father, also a cellist and the inspiration behind Mihai’s desire to become a cellist, but was told that he should “play outside with the other children while he still had chance.” This turned out to be good advice, as he had to practice intensely even during his first year of study in order to perform a concerto in front of the orchestra where his father plays. Appearing on the stage of Alice Tully Hall as a member of The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center CMS Two program would have been beyond Mihai’s wildest dreams at age 16, when with quite a bit of luck he met Prof. Aldo Parisot, who helped him move to the United States and become a student at the Yale School of Music. In his spare time Mihai enjoys sharpening his Minecraft and Smash Brothers skills with the help of his son.
Megan Wojtyla was first inspired to play the oboe after having way too much fun learning the recorder in her elementary school music class! After completing ‘Recorder Karate’ and earning her belts, she began studying the oboe with her neighbor Claudia Minch who was an oboist of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra down in Florida. Now based in Queens, New York, Megan loves to play and teach the oboe all across the country. When she’s not on tour with the Voyager Reed Quintet (an ensemble made up of oboe, clarinet, bass clarinet, bassoon, and saxophone!), she enjoys playing new music in ensembles such as the Cygnus Ensemble, Contemporary Chamber Players, and performing at Carnegie Hall as a member of the New England Symphonic Ensemble. As an oboist for the outreach concert series MusicTalks, Megan particularly enjoys showing off the ‘squawkiness’ of the oboe as she consistently reprises her role as ‘Duck’ in performances of Sergei Prokofiev’s children’s tale ‘Peter and the Wolf’. When she’s not playing or teaching, Megan loves to paint, attend her friends’ concerts, and spend quality time with her cat Roxy.
