Photo by Yumiko Izu
Bruce Adolphe, composer and piano
Bruce Adolphe is a composer of international renown, much of whose output addresses science, history, and human rights. His works are performed by major artists, including Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Fabio Luisi, Joshua Bell, Daniel Hope, Angel Blue, Brentano String Quartet, Washington National Opera, Metropolitan Opera Guild, Human Rights Orchestra of Europe, and over 60 orchestras worldwide. Among his most performed works are the violin concerto I Will Not Remain Silent, the violin/piano duo Einstein’s Light, and Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto. He is the author of several books, including The Mind’s Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination for Performers, Listeners and Composers (3rd ed., OUP 2021) and the chapter on composing in Secrets of Creativity: What Neuroscience, the Arts, and Our Minds Reveal (OUP 2019). His chapter The Sound of Human Rights: Wordless Music that Speaks for Humanity will be published in the Routledge Guide to Music and Human Rights in 2022. Widely known for his weekly Piano Puzzlers on American Public Media’s Performance Today, Mr. Adolphe is also resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and artistic director of the Off the Hook Arts Festival in Colorado. He has been a fellow of the Salzburg Global Seminar, visiting lecturer at Yale, composer-in-residence at the Brain and Creativity Institute in Los Angeles, distinguished composer-in-residence at Mannes College of Music, and on faculty at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Juilliard School. https://bruceadolphe.com.