A composer, author, educator and performer, Bruce Adolphe is Composer-in-Residence at the Brain and Creativity Institute in Los Angeles, Resident Lecturer and Director of Family Concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, founding creative director of The Learning Maestros (formerly called PollyRhythm Productions), and appears weekly on public radio's Performance Today playing his Piano Puzzlers.
Adolphe has composed music for Itzhak Perlman,Yo-Yo Ma, Sylvia McNair, the Beaux Arts Trio, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Washington National Opera, Washington Performing Arts Society, National Symphony, Caramoor Festival, St. Luke’s Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Metropolitan Opera Guild, Brentano String Quartet, Miami Quartet, David Finckel and Wu Han, the Young People's Chorus of New York, Chicago Chamber Musicians, and many others.
His many compositions include five operas and several theater pieces. His most recent opera is "Let Freedom Sing: The Story of Marian Anderson", premiered by the Washington National Opera and Washington Performing Arts Society in 2009. Adolphe has been composer-in-residence at festivals throughout the United States, including the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, Music from Angel Fire, Bravo! Colorado, Grand Canyon Festival, Moab Festival, Virginia Arts Festival, the Folger Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., the Perlman Music Program, Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, Chamber Music Virginia, O.K. Mozart Festival, Music@Menlo, and SummerFest La Jolla.
In 2009, The Kennedy Center presented an evening of Adolphe's chamber music, and at the American Museum of Natural History in New York Yo-Yo Ma premiered Adolphe's "Self Comes to Mind", a work for cello and two percussionists based on a text written for the project by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, with an interactive video of brain-scan images from the lab of Hanna Damasio.
Formerly on the faculties of the Juilliard School and New York University and a Visiting Lecturer at Yale, Adolphe has been the Resident Lecturer of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1992, and has been featured in nationally broadcast Live from Lincoln Center television programs. In 2001, Adolphe gave a lecture series, Notes and Bolts: How Music Gets Written, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, in addition to the lecture series Inside Chamber Music, at Lincoln Center, which he has presented there since 1992. He returned to the Metropolitan Museum in 2002 to present a new lecture series: The Composer’s View.
Also an author, Adolphe's books include "The Mind's Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination", "What to Listen for in the World", and "Of Mozart, Parrots and Cherry Blossoms in the Wind: A Composer Explores Mysteries of the Musical Mind." Adolphe’s music has been recorded on the Naxos, Telarc, CRI, Delos, Koch, Summit and PollyRhythm labels. His film scores include the permanent documentary at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
With Julian Fifer, Bruce Adolphe co-founded The Learning Maestros, a company devoted to creating interdisciplinary musical works with curriculum, linking musical concepts to science, art, history, and daily life. See www.thelearningmaestros.com
Adolphe’s many compositions for young listeners include Marita and Her Heart’s Desire, recorded on Telarc with Itzhak Perlman and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks, recorded with Dr. Ruth Westheimer; The Amazing Adventure of Alvin Allegretto, a comic opera written for the Metropolitan Opera Guild; Urban Scenes for Kids and String Quartet; The Purple Palace, commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra; Tyrannosaurus Sue – A Cretaceous Concerto, written for the unveiling of the dinosaur at Chicago’s Field Museum in May of 2000; Tough Turkey in the Big City, commissioned by The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center; Carnival of the Creatures, the never anticipated, un-awaited for sequel to you know what; Red Dogs and Pink Skies: A Musical Celebration of Paul Gauguin, recorded on the PollyRhythm label; and Witches, Wizards, Spells, and Elves: The Magic of Shakespeare, commissioned by The Chicago Chamber Musicians for a collaboration with the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Bruce Adolphe lives in New York City with his wife, pianist Marija Stroke, their daughter Katja, and the opera singing parrot Polly Rhythm.