Bruce Adolphe

Who is Bruce Adolphe?

Bruce Adolphe is a U.S. composer and music scholar, the author of several books on music, and pianist. He earned a B.M. and M.M. from Juilliard in 1976. His current positions include Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and founder and creative director of The Learning Maestros, formerly called PollyRhythm Productions. He creates and performs a weekly "Piano Puzzler" segment on the nationally broadcast Performance Today classical music radio program hosted by Fred Child. The Piano Puzzler show was heard on National Public Radio starting in 2002 and is now on American Public Media. It is available as a podcast and from iTunes.

Adolphe has composed music for Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman, Sylvia McNair, the Beaux Arts Trio, the Brentano String Quartet, the Miami Quartet, the National Symphony, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Chicago Chamber Musicians, The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and many other renowned performers and organizations. In 2009, Adolphe's one-act opera Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson with a libretto by Carolivia Herron was premiered at the Atlas Theater in Washington, D.C., by the Washington National Opera and the Washington Performing Arts Society, who commissioned the opera. Also in 2009, Adolphe's Violin Concerto was premiered by violinist Eugene Drucker, a member of the Emerson String Quartet, with the Idyllwild Academy Orchestra conducted by Peter Askim at the Redcat Theater of Disney Hall in Los Angeles, and an evening of Adolphe's chamber music was presented at The Kennedy Center. "Music Is", for children's chorus and youth orchestra, was premiered as part of the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Thurnauer School of Music in June, 2009, with the Young People's Chorus of New York City and the Thurnauer Orchestra. Adolphe's cantata on themes of social justice, civil rights, and freedom around the world — "Reach Out, Raise Hope, Change Society" — was commissioned to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the School of Social Work of the University of Michigan. It was premiered by the Chamber Chorus and musicians of the university's School of Music, conducted by Jerry Blackstone, in November, 2011.