{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/h41jh3f96s/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Adolphe, Bruce (2017)"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","metadata":[],"provider":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/115/original/Boxed_Milken_Center_logo.png?1628711583","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/194/163/small/Screenshot_2023-07-10_at_12.19.32_PM.png?1689016809","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - 23050_Bruce_Adolphe_FINAL.mp4"]},"duration":8306.33506,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/194/163/small/Screenshot_2023-07-10_at_12.19.32_PM.png?1689016809","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-milken.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/194/163/original/23050_Bruce_Adolphe_FINAL.mp4?1687878110","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":8306.33506,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Bruce Adolphe 2017 [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Jeff Janeczko: So, we'll start with the earliest of experiences, can you describe the circumstances surrounding your birth?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=15.0,23.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I know I was born in New York. I paid no attention to the details at the time. But my earliest memories are really of wanting a piano. When I was really little we had no piano in the house. So I played on the table, I played on chairs, you know, and I wanted a piano very badly. And I'm not sure how that started. But television had something to do with it because Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts were on, and I was totally transfixed by him, and by the music, and by his playing the piano and then talking, which is something I still do, play the piano and talk, you know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=23.0,60.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I remember my parents first got a toy piano, like the kind you would get in--you would see in a Peanuts cartoon. And I played that. I thought that was fine for a while. We had a parakeet that pecked the keys apart. When I was six, my parents decided to get a real piano, and we got a Baldwin Acrosonic, which is a--I hope it doesn't exist anymore, this kind of piano. It's terrible action, terrible sound. But it was a very inexpensive thing. Good for parents to buy kids and for people who don't want a piano, to be able to have a piano. So I played that a lot. And by then my grandmother, my mother's mother, was often visiting. And she had a much bigger bird, a parrot. And I was afraid that that parrot would peck apart or rip apart the keys on that piano the way the parakeet did on the little one. But that didn't happen.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=60.0,111.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And so I played that piano quite a lot. I started improvising. And it was clear to my parents that I should have piano lessons. And they called a woman in the neighborhood who said \"I don't take anyone under seven. And he's only six, so I think you should wait.\" So they didn't want to wait. They hired a piano teacher who shall remain nameless, who was a terrible teacher. He smoked a lot of cigars before he came into the house, and he smelled like a cigar, which is something for a six year old, that's all I could think about sitting next to this guy. And we sat on the same bench. And I thought this was maybe going to ruin music for me because he was not in a good mood, and he smelled like cigars, and he also didn't teach well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=111.0,152.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: He would say, \"this is what that says,\" and then he'd play something. So I'd play what he played. And he would say, \"no, play what it says.\" And I would say, \"I thought I played what you played.\" He said, \"but I didn't play what it says.\" So he was terrible. Eventually he told my parents I had no musical ability whatsoever. And they said, \"thank you very much.\" And luckily they were intelligent people. They didn't believe him. They saw that I spent all my time at the piano and that I could play by ear. So they just thanked him, didn't argue, and I was now seven, so I could go to the piano teacher in the neighborhood who was good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko:  What neighborhood were you living in when you were born?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=152.0,189.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: This was West Hempstead, Long Island. And the piano teacher, Eleanor Nelson, became a really important person for me, because right from the beginning when I studied a piece of music, we talked about chords and structure. And I learned harmony very early. And if I started improvising, she just let me do that, and might make a comment. And she was very encouraging that I should be a composer when I was a child. So many years later I got her a job at Juilliard. So I felt like I repaid that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Oh wow, you repaid that debt. Can you tell us about your family a little bit? What was your father's full name, and when and where was he born?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=189.0,224.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: My father was Jules Adolphe. And he was born in New York also, in 1911. And he was born into an Orthodox family. His father was a rabbi. My father's profile in his family growing up was that he wanted to be a secular person. And in his family he was the only one. And the way I heard it, he was the first person in that neighborhood that anyone knew to go get secular books, and study, and want to go to college, and not go to Yeshiva or whatever. So he did break out of that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=224.0,262.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And he also had an unusual experience as far as I know, which is very serious Orthodox experience, which was he had a brother who died. And the brother was married. So he had to, by Jewish law, marry his brother's wife. And he did that. And they knew it was just a ceremony. So they did it and then they did the divorce ceremony immediately afterward. And everybody thought that was fine. But for my brother, this was horrible. He felt...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: For your uncle?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=262.0,290.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: No, this was for my father. He felt it was absurd and it made him...to marry someone and get divorced the same day, and two rituals, it just for him made him want to leave even more the circle of this particular group of people. So he did break out. And he studied various things. He was--when I was a child he was an English teacher in a junior high school in Queens, Pulitzer Junior High. And while he loved that, he was--his main passions were Shakespeare, theater in general, he was a terrific folk dancer, and he actually danced so well that as a young man briefly he danced with Jose Limon in the Jose Limon Dance Company for one year.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=290.0,337.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: In those days the women were always trained dancers, and occasionally there were so few men available that they would take an athletic man who could do--who could do it. He did it for a while and realized this was not a career for him. So when I was a kid he danced really well, and sang really well, and quoted Shakespeare continually. And the mystery at first was that if it was Hanukkah or Passover, he suddenly could say all the Hebrew that was necessary very fluently and seemed to know everything. And that was it. The rest of the year, nothing. So I always found that mysterious. But he died when I was 11, so I didn't actually have any kind of adult relationship with him. I never really talked to him about much because he died when I was so young.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: How did he die?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=337.0,384.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: He had a heart condition which everyone tells me now when I tell them--if I tell a doctor the story, they say it would never happen now. I'm already six years older than he was when he died, which is amazing to me to consider it. But that's true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And the Shakespeare and the dancing, was that something he sort of discovered in secret while he was younger? Or after he kind of left that...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=384.0,411.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: After. Yeah. He explored life and found some good things. And Shakespeare and dancing were two of them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: A couple of them, yeah. How did that influence his relationship with his family?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=411.0,421.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, Shakespeare was very big in my family. And I passed that on to my daughter. I mean, I know most of Shakespeare pretty well. My daughter I think can still...she's 18 now and studying physics, but I still think she can quote almost every play. Or if you give her a line, she knows where it's from. Only because we read it a lot, we went to performances all the time, we rented the movies, we were just obsessed with Shakespeare. So it was very important.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=421.0,445.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And one of the great things about that, that I learned from my daughter instead of from my father, is that it was the music and the rhythm of the speech first, and the meaning and the story is later. And the reason I discovered that was when she was three, my daughter was so fascinated with \"Midsummer Night's Dream,\" and I said, do you understand this? And she said, no. So why do you like it? She said, it sounds really good. And I thought, that's really true, it sounds great. And if you get that first, you know, the feeling of the quality of the language, and the beauty of it, and the rhythm of it, and the...it has built into it, just like music does, even if there's no apparent meaning, it has a subtext. And then it turns out it does have a text. So that's an added bonus.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: The rhythm and the flow come first.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=445.0,491.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Did it influence his relationship with his parents though when he decided...you said he was kind of the only one who, you know, was not wanting to go to Yeshiva and...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=491.0,502.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. You know, I never met my father's parents. And he didn't say much about them. By the time I was 11, I hadn't heard much. He had five sisters. And they all remained Orthodox. And some of their kids who are all adults now of course were Orthodox and some not. And they were...I felt quite strongly that my father's sisters and their husbands were less interested in the world than my father. They were only interested in Jewish things. And if \"Fiddler on the Roof\" were on Broadway, that's fine. But nothing else. And the recordings, they didn't want to hear Beethoven because he was German. I understand in retrospect having lived through World War II, why they wouldn't want to hear Beethoven perhaps.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=502.0,548.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But my father wasn't like that. And there was no guilt by association, there was no extension of a crime to an entire culture. He was very sophisticated. And I feel like that their lack of involvement with the secular intellectual world was a problem. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: What about your mother? Where was she born? And when and where was she born? What was her name?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=548.0,575.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, my mother's name was Anita. And her last name sounds Italian, but it's Polish-Jewish, Litucci [ph]. I have no idea--I think it might have been said Litucci in Poland. But her mother, Rebecca Litucci, came as a 16-year-old to New York from Poland to escape a pogrom. She came by herself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=575.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: When she got to New York, eventually she married. And my mother had a brother, Noel. And my mother did not have Judaism or religion, that is, at all growing up. Nothing. She spoke some Yiddish and my mother's mother, Rebecca, spoke Yiddish primarily and not such good English. And my mother was very involved with anything my father liked doing because she was very attracted to the dancing, and the Shakespeare, and the theater. And that really meant a lot to her. I think she was uncomfortable when he would come out with all the Hebrew at Hanukkah and things. She didn't mind it, but she--it wasn't something she grew up with. So I think she felt somehow it was a gap between them.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=600.0,650.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: They did decide to send my brother, Jonathan and me, both of us went to a Yiddish school for a while. We went to a school--people said, did you go to Hebrew school? But I went to Yiddish school. And I only went for a few years. It was run by the Workmen's Circle. So it was a left-wing Jewish culture organization in which they told stories and we read stories in Yiddish. And the religion part of it was considered cultural. We heard a lot of klezmer music. And the feeling was celebrations were important and culture was important. And there was some discussion--like if a bible story was in the discussion, it would be compared to something going on in real life today. So that was interesting.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=650.0,695.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I didn't stick with it that long, partly because I think the piano and wanting to compose became so important that when I wasn't in school I wanted to be doing that. And my parents were fine with that. And my brother too, who was painting, and he's still an artist. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I see.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=695.0,710.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So the arts became more important than anything religious, especially since my father had left it and my mother never had it. So it wasn't a serious issue, theology, that is.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you say she did not grow up with a lot of Judaism in her life. So what--how would you describe the general milieu of how she grew up?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=710.0,730.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I--from what I know, which again is not a huge amount, she died when I was 19. And so in both cases it's not like I had an ongoing relationship and lots of stories after I became an adult. I don't have that. So I have mostly childhood memories. And it was clear from knowing my mother's mother that she was...it was a big thing for my mother to go to college and get an education because her mother and father were not educated. They managed to make a family and find something to do. I know that they had a lot of animals in the house. And that I heard about a lot. More than one parrot, several dogs, cats, and all kinds of--rooster and things like that at one point.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=730.0,773.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And that was in New York City. So that's a strange thought, actually. It must have been a very different New York than the one I know. Of course I still have a parrot now. I've had...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I was going to ask, is either of...is it the same as either of the parrots that you've mentioned already?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=773.0,789.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: My grandmother's parrot died when I was eight. And my family decided...you know, we were bird people, there was always a parakeet or something. So when this parrot, who had been visiting us every weekend during my grandmother's life, when this bird died, the family wanted to get another bird. So we first got a myna bird and it didn't work out. It didn't have the personality and the--none of us felt close to it. So we traded it in plus some money for a brand new baby parrot. And that bird, which we got when I was 10 or 11, I believe 10, I still have. He's an opera singer, and he sings jazz, and talks. And he's...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I heard him on the radio once.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=789.0,828.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Yes. He's--yes, Polyrhythm the Feathered Diva. Yeah. He's a pretty amazing bird. And he's still fine. So that's a strange family connection.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So did he pick up opera singing just from listening to recordings and things like that around the house?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=828.0,843.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Well, when I was 10 and 11 and 12, those first three years he learned his whole repertoire. In fact he learned a lot of it the first three or four months of his life. Because I was very into opera recordings. And I played them all the time. And for a little parrot, hearing sopranos singing fairly large volume out of good speakers singing Mozart and Bach--it was mostly Bach cantatas and Mozart arias. But he picked up also some Strauss. And he sings fragments of this even today. So it's cute. And he puts it together in his own way. And some people say, well is he improvising? And I think the answer is, in a way, yes. But you know, you can get your iPhone to shuffle. And it's kind of like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Just slotting different fragments together.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=843.0,889.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: He really...yeah. Right. He reorganizes. But he does do it emotionally. That's true.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: He does?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yes. If he gets really turned on...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: An expressivity to it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=889.0,897.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. Expressive and also reacts to the mood of the person singing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you had a...you did not have a relationship with your father's parents, but you did with...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Just my--no. Just my mother's mother.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Your mother's mother.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=897.0,908.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. She stayed with us often on weekends. And between her Yiddish and the bird, that's my main memory of her. She lived to be 94, so she saw her daughter die. And it was very tough. And eventually she became slightly demented, but in a way that I kind of enjoyed because she just talked endlessly about parrots. And very, very well. It was her one subject. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And you mentioned the Yiddish school at the Workmen's Circle. How long did you attend there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=908.0,938.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I'm guessing, I have to tell you, but I think it was probably two or three years during the school year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And what did you learn about there? Did you learn mainly how to speak Yiddish? Were you...you mentioned klezmer music...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=938.0,952.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: We learned to speak Yiddish, which I haven't really needed to speak Yiddish or found it as part of my life for many years. But I spoke Yiddish as a kid only in that school and occasionally with my grandmother. I could read the Forwards, you know, the paper. We learned occasionally, we did discuss the Holocaust there. We read stories by some good authors and tried to read them in Yiddish, and sometimes we didn't. But we discussed Isaac Bashevis Singer. I mean, Jewish authors. We learned about the holidays in ways that were nice for children. We had a Purim party and we had a Purim show. And...but that was about it. And it was on Sundays, so it was--the whole thing was a little odd, but...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you remember any of the teachers there? Were there any influential or...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=952.0,1004.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I only remember Mr. Levinson. And not very well. And I'm trying to think of why do I remember him. We used to tease him about something. And that's probably what I remember. But I think we must have liked him. But I, you know, we marched around with flags and apples, and did all the things that kids do for various parties.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And you mentioned you were introduced to klezmer music there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1004.0,1031.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: They played klezmer music there. They didn't teach us anything about it, but that was fine with me. They would occasionally play the music on recordings and I loved that. And it took me years to realize what it was because they didn't--the music was secondary. We sang songs, mostly folk songs. And we had a folk song book in Yiddish. I still remember they were little white spiral binding on a blue cover with badly drawn characters and figures, probably drawn by a child. And that was nice. And those were run off on mimeograph machines, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That was put out by the Workmen's Circle, I assume?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1031.0,1064.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. Yeah. Something like that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You don't remember any of the recordings? Or did you like any of the artists that were played...?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Oh, I wouldn't know. See they never told us any of that. Yeah. No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: ...just kind of in the background, more?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1064.0,1077.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. Yeah. But my parents did a lot of folk dancing. And they had a collection of 45 albums, I mean, those little 45 discs with the adapter that you had to put in there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. I remember.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1077.0,1090.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: There's a commercial going around that says, if you know what this is, it's time for a checkup. But anyway, they had a lot of those. And a lot of those were Jewish. A lot--some were Israeli folk music, some were just Jewish folk tunes. But it was also music from around the world. And after I, as a teenager, spent a few summers at the Kinhaven Music School in Vermont, which is still there and a fantastic place. When I stopped going there, my parents...actually no, it was my mother, my father had died. We donated all the recordings to Kinhaven. So they have an elaborate folk dance tradition there. And they recorded--they digitized much of it. So when my daughter was there, I went to see the camp and there she was dancing to my parents' folk music. And she--I don't even think she realized it until I, of course, I mentioned it to her. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That's pretty amazing...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1090.0,1145.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: ...sort of continuity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yes. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you mentioned your father was teaching English.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Was that what he did for a living for most of his life?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1145.0,1156.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Yes. He taught English. And he was pretty creative about it. He got involved in like in projects outside of his school. One, he was on a radio show once as an actor. He wrote for the \"Book of Knowledge,\" which came out once a year. He wrote at least one article that I remember, an article on shadow puppets. So he was kind of into education in a broad way, between the teaching dancing, teaching English, and he taught theater at the school also, at this junior high school. He was always the one to direct the plays. And I still have some copies of Shakespeare where he edited them down so they could be done by high school plays, you know, high school actors. Cut them down shorter, made it a little easier.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1156.0,1201.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So the feeling of do some theater, do some singing, do some dancing, and so all education, that's something that had a huge impression on me and that has stayed with me because I still do theatrical kinds of education. In fact this coming weekend after the performance of the violin concerto, I'm going back to New York to do Inspector Pulse, who is one of my characters, he's a private ear who investigates musical mysteries. And that kind of fun way of teaching definitely comes from my father.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: What was the...West Hempstead, is that the name of the neighborhood you mentioned? And you grew up most of your life there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1201.0,1239.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Well, from nursery school through graduating high school, but I left high school quite early. I had just turned 16 when I graduated. And I went to Juilliard when I just had become a 16 year old. And at that point I moved into the city.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And I want to talk about that in a minute. Maybe you could just tell us a little bit about the neighborhood you grew up in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1239.0,1260.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: The neighborhood was fairly standard 1950s, '60s, early '70s kind of suburban neighborhood. The houses were different. It wasn't a Levittown kind of thing. It wasn't carbon copy sort of little boxes on the hillside kind of place. But it was a ranch house here, a Tudor house there, a brick house, you know, different kinds of homes. People had big backyards. We had a very large backyard with a few trees. And we as kids would play sports back there, perhaps, and parties out there. And the house was small, although I didn't think it at the time. But I since have visited it, and it's pretty small. And it had a basement. We spent a lot of time in the basement because it was a dark place you could be creative. My brother painted there quite a lot. And I sometimes went down there to be artistic, whatever that meant. But the piano was upstairs, so I was mostly there. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And your--did your mother work?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1260.0,1317.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: My mother taught a number of different things. Most of my childhood she was a phys ed teacher, which I think she liked, but didn't love doing. But then she switched to being a guidance counselor. She liked, just like my father did, liked being in a public school. And they liked being with teenagers and teaching them things. And I think for her phys ed was something she got the degree in and then she could teach it. I think it might have been a passion at one point, but by the time I was a little bit older, I think it was just she had to keep doing it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1317.0,1347.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: She liked being a guidance counselor. And part of a change to that was, I only found out later, is that she had already had cancer, and was treated and was in remission, and she needed to do something where she could just sit down and be at a desk. So she managed to get a guidance counselor job. And then when the illness came back, which I didn't know was to return, she had to stop working.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: As you get older then and into middle school, what is your life like?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1347.0,1377.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/45","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Let's see. Well, where I went to school, the junior high school, high school continuum, for me was one thing, because I did an accelerated fifth and sixth grade in one year, and then I skipped a year somehow, and I graduated as a junior. So I didn't spend a lot of time in school. I just couldn't wait to get out of there. Most of my memories of that age were my music focused ones, which is I went to the Juilliard Pre-College on Saturdays. And during the summers I went to the Kinhaven Music School.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1377.0,1407.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/46","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But I did things, for example, like I got out of going to gym by playing the piano for the acrobatics performances. I joined the tennis team, but I could never go because they only played on Saturdays, and that was when I went to Juilliard. So that was another conflict. I did like some of the teachers I had, and English teachers were good in junior high, high. And I still remember a science teacher that I thought was great who taught us about ciliated columnar epithelium, which is the nose hairs. And for some reason that stuck me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you remember his or her name?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1407.0,1439.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/47","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Mr. DiMartino. I haven't thought about that in a long time. He...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And the name of the school?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1439.0,1444.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/48","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: The name of the school was West Hempstead Junior Senior High. They were kind of merged together. Yeah. Before--I mean, my elementary school was Cornwell Avenue Elementary School. A funny thing about Juilliard Pre-College, which was...now this is when I was about 13 or 14. I went as a composer and I also went there to play bassoon and piano. So I wanted to be in a chamber music group. And they sent me to this room where they were playing the Spohr Nonet, which has a...but they didn't need a bassoon, they already had one. There was no piano. And they said, we need someone to play the viola part. And since you're a composer, you know, you're a student, can you read the alto clef and play it on your bassoon? I said, sure, that's no problem.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1444.0,1491.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/49","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: All the kids were calling the teacher Uncle Don. So I went home and I--my mother said, \"who's the teacher of this class?\" I said, \"his name is Uncle Don.\" She said, \"well what's his last name?\" I said, \"Litucci [ph].\" And she said, \"do you realize that that's my maiden name?\" I said, \"oh, yeah.\" And she said, \"we might be related, who is this guy?\" So I found out I had a cousin teaching at Juilliard, I had no idea. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That's amazing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1491.0,1515.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/50","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. So I went in the next day and I called him cousin Don. And everyone...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Instead of Uncle Don.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yeah. And everyone said, \"it's Uncle Don, not...\" and I said, \"no, actually it's cousin Don.\" He didn't know either. No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: He didn't know your mother?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: He knew who she was when he thought about it, but he didn't...they never met.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So your mother then had a fairly large family?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1515.0,1533.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/51","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: She had a medium-sized family, which didn't communicate that much. I met my Uncle Noel, her brother, a few times. I actually know more Lituccis now than I knew growing up. I know where they are. Some of them have identified themselves or come to a concert and introduced themselves. And they're--now I'm getting to know them actually. And as we speak, the Litucci family tree is coming my way, partly because of this interview. I was shocked that I couldn't think of names of people. And I--so I called one of the...I called Natasha Litucci, who called her father. And she said, \"send Bruce the family tree.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: We talked about your mother's family coming from Poland. I don't know if we...do you know about where your father's family...how they got to the U.S.?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1533.0,1578.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/52","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I don't know when they came, actually. But my father's father I'm quite sure was a Brooklyn person also. So they had come earlier. But the areas were what you would call Austria and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. So if you go into the nineteenth century, that's where they were, pretty much. So it was...and some people in my family mentioned Russia. So there...it could be one of these traveling situations where you have some Russian, some Polish, some Galicia, you know, and this kind of thing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1578.0,1613.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/53","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And since my parents died when I was kind of young and my...I didn't talk to my Orthodox relatives about this stuff, and I didn't know my mother's side too well, although at least I knew they came from Poland, there was a lot that I never learned. You know, like my brother's father--sorry, my father's brother who died, Maurice, who I...my middle name is Morrie [ph], named after him. I don't know anything about him. And I still don't. And I don't even know anyone who can tell me. So that's a strange phenomenon of I think related to the way some people dealt with World War II, which is, that's it, never talk about it, never mention it, never discuss it. And if you're going to die on top of it, then there's no way, you know, so...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: But it sounds like you did not have a lot of contact with your father's family then before or after...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1613.0,1663.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/54","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I had contact with his five sisters at Passover. You know, so we would have a Passover party or...but if they came to my home, they wouldn't eat our food because it wasn't kosher. They'd bring their own. And they wouldn't put their food on our plates either. So that gave me not such a great feeling of family, you know.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I can imagine.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1663.0,1682.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/55","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. It wasn't putting their best food forward. Because you don't come to someone's house and refuse to even touch their silverware and then tell them you should be Orthodox. Why? So that I--my feeling was, you know, so that I can't eat with my family or my friends or...? So I appreciate Orthodoxy for what it is now, of course. But I separate that from what I had growing up. You know, family dynamics are not a way to learn philosophy. There, there's a line for you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you've talked a little about your earliest memories being the piano, having the toy piano around, the cigar-smoking teacher that put you off.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And then tell me the name of your first--the other teacher again that you eventually got.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Eleanor Nelson. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Eleanor Nelson. Okay. So can you walk me through your education with her a little bit? How long did you study with her?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1682.0,1740.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/56","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I studied with her from age 7 to probably 12, maybe 13. I didn't study piano after that at all, because I moved into composition. And I did study composition with people and I also was playing bassoon and clarinet and other instruments. But Eleanor, I would go to her house. And she was a very clear, structured teacher. And she gave me repertoire. I would learn originally easier pieces and I'm not sure what those were. But pretty quickly Mozart and Beethoven sonatas and Bach \"Well-Tempered Clavier.\" And she did a balance of, this piece has to be learned thoroughly and memorized, and this piece you can play and then leave it, you know, depending on my mood or how it was going.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1740.0,1787.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/57","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I learned quite a lot of repertoire. And it was varied. I played with her, I played some Ravel and some Debussy. And lots of Beethoven and Mozart and Bach. And some Haydn and also contemporary pieces, something by Bill Schuman, and other living composers, Ross Lee Finney and Tcherepnin and people like that who are not alive now, but they were when I was a kid. And as I say, she included harmony and discussion of structure and form, so that I was always aware of that sort of thing. And I didn't think of music as pushing my fingers on keys. To me it was a compositional thing. And so that was important.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1787.0,1826.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/58","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And because of her, my mother wanted to find me a composition teacher. And first I was briefly at C.W. Post, the college, sitting in on a class on contemporary music and music performance with some college students when I was about 11. And I didn't fit into that class very well, but everyone was nice to me. And I learned a few things there. But then it wasn't really appropriate. So then we went to Hofstra to talk to Elie Siegmeister, who was teaching there. And he gave me a kind of an audition. And then he said, \"you can study with me, but first I want you to study with my assistant, Herb Deutsch.\" So that was fine. I studied with Herb--this is, I guess I was still 11 when this happened. I studied with Herb Deutsch for the whole school year once a week.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1826.0,1875.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/59","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I guess when I was 12, which happened at some point, right after 11, I auditioned--or I sent in a couple of manuscripts to the BMI...I sent in some manuscripts to the BMI Student Composers Awards, and they gave me an award. And that really made me incredibly excited about composing. And Herb Deutsch was excited because he really didn't expect that to happen. And he was not encouraging me to enter a competition that goes up to age 26. And of course I probably got...I've since been a judge of that competition, and we would sometimes have like four winners who were around 24, 25, and then pick one young winner. So I was one of those. And he gave me the Harvard Dictionary of Music as a present.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1875.0,1921.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/60","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And meanwhile my mother was always investigating camps and schools. And so I did the same thing. And there were two very fine string players in my junior high school who both went to the Juilliard Pre-College, which I had never heard of. And they said, \"you should do that.\" So I auditioned for that. And then Elie Siegmeister was waiting for me to study with him. But I said I'm going to Juilliard Pre-College. He said, \"why would you do that?\" I said, \"well I can play in the orchestra, I can play in chamber music, I'll have a theory class, I'll have a solfege class, and I'll have composition.\" He said, \"but composition with who?\" I said, \"his name is Lawrence Widdoes.\" And he said, \"he's a copyist.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1921.0,1963.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/61","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So that really upset me. I checked into it, and yes, he did copy music occasionally for people, but he was a composer. And he was nice. So that--even though I think it would have been really interesting to study with Siegmeister in retrospect, as a child hearing him disrespect this man did not help my decision. My mother and I decided to just go to Juilliard Pre-College and take all of these things. So that's what happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That was the end of your relationship with Siegmeister, then?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Basically. I mean, occasionally he would send me a note or something because he...I don't think he meant for it to end badly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Sure.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1963.0,1999.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/62","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: What do you remember about that composition that won the--you were 14, you said? You were 11?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: No, I was 12.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: 12.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=1999.0,2005.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/63","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: It was a little piano piece. And it was modal. And it might have had a title about--I think it's the right piece, like \"Earthbound\" or something like that. And I'm not sure I realized that that meant earthbound. I think it might have meant the opposite. But anyway, it was a modal, quiet, contemplative piece, which perhaps had a Jewish quality since it was so modal and I was hearing so much of that. But I think that they might have thought it was a genuine little piece and not a little kid trying to be impressive. So I mean, that's why it won. I have been a judge of that for many, many years later on. And so I realized that something that is not trying to impress you might actually work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. You listed a bunch of things you were doing. So it sounds like performance was a big part of that. Were you still primarily a pianist at this point?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2005.0,2055.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/64","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I was, but I loved playing the bassoon. And I was very serious about that. I played the bassoon in the Long Island Youth Orchestra, the Virtuoso Ensemble which was another high school-age orchestra on Long Island, and the Juilliard Pre-College Orchestra. And in chamber music at Juilliard I played bassoon and I also played piano. So I was performing a lot. And I think I loved doing it and it was important to me. So and then the summers were at Kinhaven Music School, which I keep mentioning because it was so important to me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That was the entire summer you...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: It would be nine weeks.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You lived there?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2055.0,2091.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/65","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. It was a nine-week summer camp that focused on music. And now it's six weeks. It still exists. My daughter has gone there. I'm on the board now. And I--it's a great place. And when I was there, I played bassoon in the orchestra, I played piano in chamber music, and I wrote music. Now they have a composition program. At the time they didn't. But they would play pieces--if a student wrote a piece, they would read it. And the conductor while I was there, who actually just died about a month or two ago, Jerry Bidlack, he was great to me in that if I wrote something for orchestra, he would get all the kids together, because this is before computers, and we'd copy out parts by hand, like a party. And then he would let me conduct it, even at a concert.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2091.0,2138.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/66","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I had this fabulous experience there, which was one of the most important--talk about a formative thing and a relationship with the teacher where his...what he did was just facilitate. He didn't make a speech. He didn't criticize. He didn't praise. He just gave opportunities. And then, you know, that's all you need. And it was great. And he...everything was the same to him. You know, it's a lot of work to have kids do this, but that's what they should do. They should sit down, copy the parts, let's read it, see how it goes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2138.0,2165.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/67","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So there was a...Kinhaven was quite significant. And I would say even to this day, many of my friends and acquaintances I either met at Kinhaven or at Juilliard Pre-College. And at the Pre-College...well I should say, I sort of segued eventually, you can ask me later, but I eventually segued into teaching at the Pre-College. And I taught there for 20 years. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Were there any other teachers there that you remember being particularly influential?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2165.0,2194.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/68","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: There were a lot of great teachers there. And there still are. They're all different now of course. One thing I should say about Jerry though is that when I brought my daughter to the camp when she was a teenager, many, many years later, he was still there and he was still conducting. And he was no longer the main conductor, but he...to show up many years later and see the same conductor was a wonderful experience. And he said, \"hey Bruce, how you doing?\" Like no time had passed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Like he saw you yesterday.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2194.0,2222.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/69","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: From 16 to 50-something. Yeah. I remember a violin teacher, Mary Jane Metcalf, who was wonderful. And Bob Moore was the bassoon teacher. I studied with him. And his wife was my piano teacher briefly. But I didn't really--the piano lessons were very secondary at Kinhaven. I was really a bassoon player because of the orchestra. And it was different. And I was enjoying that. But my main memories of the place are of the fun. And actually I now realize there's a very important Milken Archive recording thing that happened there, which is--I met Lucy Shelton there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2222.0,2260.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/70","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And Lucy, who sings on my Milken Archive recording, \"Ladino Songs,\" Lucy was teaching--she was the activities counselor at Kinhaven, and she did some singing. And she had been a flutist actually, but she was doing some teaching. And Lucy and I became very close and it stayed a friendship for many years. And that also happened that--as a Kinhaven story during the summer. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So aside from your--it sounds like a big part of your life is kind of formal study of music. You're in Juilliard, you're in these camps.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2260.0,2296.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/71","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: What's the rest of your musical world like? Are you listening to recordings? Are you going to performances?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: At that time?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2296.0,2303.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/72","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Growing up, yes, I was a huge listener of records. Back, you know, these were LPs, of course. And I listened to Leonard Bernstein, both his compositions and anything he conducted. I was very turned on by \"The Rite of Spring,\" which Eleanor Nelson gave me, my first taste of that recording. And I just listened to it all the time. I believe that I probably--I'm pretty sure I danced to it on a regular basis using the living room as a stage and having known my father's Jose Limon story. So I was very involved with that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2303.0,2339.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/73","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I listened to all of the Beethoven quartets when I was about 15 and 16. I listened to them many, many times. And it was the Guarneri Quartet recordings that came out. I was also very attached to the clarinet for a while, so I listened to Benny Goodman recordings, and also his one classical disc which was the Mozart Clarinet Quintet with the Budapest Quartet, and the Mozart Clarinet Concerto with whatever orchestra that was. I don't remember, on the other side. And I also listened to jazz, without being as aware of the players as I was with the classical. I would put it on quite a lot.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2339.0,2377.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/74","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I knew the American songbook growing up. We didn't call it that then. But I knew all, you know, all of Gershwin, and most of Harold Arlen, and Irving Berlin, and all of those guys. They weren't contemporary popular music. I mean, that was old music. But of course my parents had all this music. And it was still on the radio. And performers still used it as the primary basic material for improvisation. So I grew up improvising a lot on Gershwin tunes and Harold Arlen tunes. And I didn't know the name Harold Arlen until many years later, but I knew all the tunes. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Was there any popular music in the mix at all?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yeah. I was...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Did you listen to the Beatles or anything like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2377.0,2419.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/75","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I was interested in the Beatles. My brother was completely involved with the pop music of the day. He was a painter. And for him, he didn't study classical music except very briefly. So I often got introduced to the pop music because my brother was listening to it. And I did really like the Beatles. Also on a lighter side, Simon and Garfunkel I enjoyed. But something that I got really into was Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan and all of those types of people. And actually it's funny how I can forget a whole thing, but actually I played the banjo, a lot. I had a five string banjo and I learned it from the Pete Seeger \"Teach Yourself Banjo\" book. And then I listened to Pete Seeger recordings and I played along a lot. And I listened to other folk--people of different styles.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2419.0,2469.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/76","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I would say my musical milieu was probably 60 percent classical. And then the rest of it was divided up between some jazz, some American songbook, some folk music, the Beatles, and occasionally something else. I can remember listening to the Doors for a while and saying to my brother, there's only one interval in this entire song. Or maybe two.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you're pretty adept at teaching yourself various instruments and things like that? Does that kind of come pretty easy...?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2469.0,2499.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/77","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Up to a point. Yeah. I--if I pick up an instrument, especially when I was a kid, I could figure it out pretty quickly to get something. I mean, it didn't mean I became advanced. But the banjo I could play pretty well. I taught myself guitar and I played that with some facility, but mostly just folk music. I occasionally learned a simple classical piece that I would teach myself. So I didn't discover until years later that with classical guitar it's over here and not over here. But that's because I was learning it by myself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2499.0,2529.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/78","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But clarinet and bassoon I played. I took flute lessons many years later just for fun. I played oboe very briefly. Because I loved playing woodwind instruments. So I was always trying woodwind instruments. I had some lessons on the viola, but that didn't--it was not as easy for me. But another relationship to the recording that has Lucy on it, also on that recording is Eliot Fisk. I met him at Kinhaven also. So...and I had my guitar with me. So that summer I was there to play bassoon in the orchestra, and play piano, and do some composing. But I brought a viola that I rented from my high school. And I brought a classical guitar, which I owned, and I was playing folk music on it. So I had all this stuff with me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2529.0,2572.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/79","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I heard during the first few hours that I was walking around the campus of Kinhaven, which is in Vermont, that there's this kid who's my age who is a guitar phenomenon. And he's the only guitarist in the camp. And they never had a guitarist before because there's not a lot of chamber music and he can't be in the orchestra. But they're going to do a couple of concertos with him and he's going to play some chamber music. And his name is Eliot Fisk and he's just incredible. And he can play Scarlatti sonatas written for the keyboard on the guitar.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2572.0,2602.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/80","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I thought, wow, that's unbelievable. So I had my guitar out, and I was just tuning it, and I was going to play for myself, and I see this guy with a guitar. This must be Eliot Fisk coming towards me. So I decided, which is a little bit how I was at this time, that I would pretend that I was a great classical guitarist, also. So he comes towards me and he said, \"I thought I was the only guitar student.\" I said, \"no, no, you're not the only guitar student.\" And I said, \"are you Eliot?\" And he said, \"yeah, who are you?\" I said, \"I'm Bruce.\" And I said, \"I'm just thinking about what I want to play.\" He said, \"well what repertoire are you playing?\" So I thought I'd really nail it and I said, \"I'm playing the Beethoven piano sonatas, I kind of just...I play those.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2602.0,2641.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/81","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: He said, \"on the guitar?\" I said, \"yeah, why not? I mean, I have to change things, but...\" He said, \"can I hear you play this?\" And I kept it up for a long time sort of doing this kind of Ed Norton, I'm about to play the guitar thing without actually playing it. And then finally I played an F-major barre chord. And he went, \"oh I see. You're kidding.\" So we became friends then too. And it is kind of funny that Kinhaven and those childhood experiences did manifest in some way in that recording, with two of those people being in--together.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Because they commissioned you to write that piece.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2641.0,2677.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/82","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, actually Lucy did, along with David Jolley, the horn player. But Eliot was not involved in the commission. The commission originally came from David Starobin, who did premiere the piece. But somehow my old friend, and Kinhaven, and the other thing, after a while Eliot was playing it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You touched on this a little bit earlier about your father's kind of move away from the Orthodox world. So what--how would you describe your relationship to Judaism and Jewish life growing up?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2677.0,2708.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/83","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: All right. That's a great question. I have to say, I feel culturally profoundly Jewish. I identify with it. I know the music very well. I know the jokes very well. I know the temperament very well. I once said to my wife, Maria, who is Jewish--but the name Maria makes you think she's not--but she had not met any of my father's relatives yet. And I said, \"let me tell you what they're like. They're like Mel Brooks with no sense of humor.\" So, you know, that's sort of a part of it. Now I actually do know a lot about Judaism, I mean, about the theology and about religion, partly because as a kid there was this school where they taught us some things, but also we did Passover and Hanukkah, but the Passover was serious. I didn't...my family was the only non-Orthodox family in this gathering, with the five sisters and their husbands and their kids. Everybody was really serious about it. And my father also, the Hebrew would come out and so I heard, you know, the Seders were long and real.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2708.0,2779.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/84","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I grew up with that. And I grew up knowing--well for example, my Aunt Nancy and Uncle Herman, who are both not alive now, they even went so far as to believe in the kind of spiritual world that a lot of Orthodox Jews would dismiss. I mean, like dybbuks and everything. And I know this partly because one time my aunt--I was living in my house in Long Island by myself. My parents were both dead and my brother was married. He's three years older. And I was there by myself. And Aunt Nancy and Uncle Herman had come to the house after my mother died to look through her things. I wasn't there, but I was subletting the--or I was renting the basement out to somebody. So that person who was an adult came up and--young adult--came up, opened the door, and let them in.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2779.0,2838.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/85","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And when I came home later, there was a note from Uncle Herman that said, \"we were here, and you weren't, now you are and we're not,\" which was cute and his style. But what wasn't so funny was that they had taken almost everything she owned without discussing it with me. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: This was your mother's brother?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2838.0,2853.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/86","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: My father's sister and her husband taking my mother's stuff. So I was really not happy about it. They took books, they took a menorah, they took a lot of her clothes, they took some jewelry. And they thought it was their right because I'm a kid. But you know, this was my mother. So I called up, and I couldn't control myself, and I yelled at them. And when I was done yelling at them, one of them, and I don't remember which one, said \"you are no longer a member of this family.\" So I didn't know that they meant that. They actually thought they were cutting me off, right? So I was in shock. I said, \"what is that supposed to mean?\" And they said, \"just what it sounds like,\" this sort of thing. You know, \"you can't talk to us like that, we're your older relatives.\" I said, \"well you just came to my house and took stuff.\" \"So what does that mean? We have the right to do that.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2853.0,2902.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/87","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Anyway, it ended where I--it seemed like they would never talk to me again. So after a period of time, probably just a few weeks, I talked to my brother about it. And he made a suggestion which turned out to be true. I mean, I didn't realize that they would believe this. But I called up and said that I had been possessed when I said those things, of either a ghost or my mother's ghost or some ghost. I told them that. And to my great shock--I was so nervous saying that because I thought they were going to be even more furious. There was--I guess this is the best use of the expression, dead silence, I've ever heard. And eventually they said, well, then you're forgiven.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2902.0,2945.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/88","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I didn't want to be forgiven, but it was better than being excommunicated. So since--as far as I was concerned, I was never not part of the family, I was just having an argument. But in their view, I was not, and now I am. And because they related it to a ghost and a demon, I just thought, I can--I don't know if I could ever deal with these people again. But, you know, I did. And it was fine. That made me think of--oh, yeah, you know, there's a very significant aspect of my life that you would never ask me about because you wouldn't know, which is that I had a really serious hand accident when I was 19. Because we've gone up to that and passed that point and around. And I still have tremendous difficulty using this hand.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2945.0,2990.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/89","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And so when I play the piano, I'm actually using only four fingers on this hand. And I have no lateral motion. And it's because I cut nerves in here with a glass door. It was just an accident, which turned out to be very serious. And luckily by that point, this was 1974, by that point I had been--I was absolutely sure I wanted to be a composer. Because the piano playing was severely affected by it and I've never really recovered. So when I play the Piano Puzzlers, I write them so I can play them. Sometimes I can barely play them or I fake them or things. But there's a lot of music that I used to be able to play that I can't. But since I'm a composer, I often rearrange things while I'm playing them. You know, and people don't necessarily know that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=2990.0,3036.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/90","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But it is a frustration and I had to give up the bassoon for the same reason because the hand position was one that I just couldn't actually do anymore. So that--with my parents dying and that happening all around the same time--that had a profound effect. And the effect actually was that I became a survivor personality, like some people who have a holocaust situation. I just always needed to work, always made sure everything was okay, you know, that I was--money was coming in, that I was playing. Because I didn't have parental support and I didn't have what I thought was going to be the easiest bread and butter, which was I was going to play--accompany singers, just play for anybody who wanted a pianist, I would be the pianist. Now I couldn't do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3036.0,3078.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/91","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So instead I turned my attention to composing for film scores, documentaries, mostly writing for PBS, writing for Smithsonian World, and doing short projects like that, and working for the theater. And it ended up being great. And my--I don't regret anything. I'm sorry that that happened, but it turned me into somebody who's spent a lot of time in many fields related to music, and I got lots of interesting experiences doing that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You were already on a path toward becoming a composer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Totally.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: But you felt this--this pushed you even...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3078.0,3108.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/92","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: It's not that it pushed me--it's not that it pushed me further. It just cut off another side that would have been easy. I mean, for a while I thought maybe I'd play bassoon in an orchestra to make a really, you know, a good orchestra, and make a solid living, and be completely free to compose aside from that. And then I thought, maybe I'd rather be an available pianist, or play in a new music ensemble, and accompany singers, and team up with a violinist. But by the time I was 19, I realized after that accident that it's not going to happen.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3108.0,3137.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/93","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So in a sense I haven't felt totally comfortable with this hand since then. But I'm so used to it that I almost forgot to mention it and I often do. And very few people know about it. And the first time I played in public after this happened was...in the early '90s. I think it was early '90s. I had written some songs for Sylvia McNair. And I was rehearsing them with her. But my intention was that they would be played by someone else. So after she learned all the songs and we were having fun with them, I said, \"so who would you like? I've got three pianists you can do this with.\" And she said, \"what are you talking about, aren't we doing it?\" I said, \"no, I don't perform in public.\" And she said, \"why not? We should do it.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3137.0,3187.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/94","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So then I didn't tell her right at that moment that there was a reason. And I thought, maybe I should. If Sylvia McNair is not sure, and I'm sitting right here playing this, maybe I should do it. So I did. And it just changed my life. It was great. I felt fantastic. And I realized there was a lot I could still do. And I do play. I perform quite a bit. It's strange, but I can't perform the same level and all the repertoire I would have done, but I have a nice fun life playing the piano.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. It's a big part of what you do it seems.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: It is, actually. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Can I ask what happened in the accident?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3187.0,3221.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/95","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I knocked open a glass door in a rush using my hand and my foot. And it was plate glass. This was in Aspen, Colorado. And actually that glass is now illegal in all doors. Not because of me. But it so happens that there were so many accidents with this kind of glass.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You're not the only one who ever did that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3221.0,3239.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/96","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Right. And it broke. It was the kind of glass that if you have a picture frame and it breaks easily, that was what was in the door. And a piece of it fell down from the top like a guillotine and cut my hand almost off. And I would've died except some guy I don't know his name now, and I didn't know who he was then, pulled his shirt off and made a tourniquet around that was unbelievably tight and professional. And he must've known what he was doing. And he and a friend of mine drove me to the Aspen hospital on a Sunday afternoon. So there was one surgeon on call. He wasn't there. So I had to wait an hour for this guy to show up. And he said that this was not his--the kind of thing he normally does, but he sewed it all up. And then about nine weeks later in New York, I had to have a lot redone because it was emergency.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3239.0,3282.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/97","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I remember not having any idea how serious it was. I just didn't know. I said, \"will I be able to play the piano after this?\" And he said, \"probably not.\" And I thought, \"I can't believe he said that.\" And that was the beginning of a whole new phase of my life. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. You mentioned earlier the--hearing the recordings of klezmer music at the Workmen's Circle school. Is that your earliest kind of Jewish musical memory? Are there other ones?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3282.0,3309.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/98","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I think even earlier than that were some of the recordings my parents danced to. But that would be it. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: What kind of stuff was that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Well, folk music, that some of it was klezmer, some of it was really traditional more Sephardic music. Some of it was kind of commercialized Sephardic music, I remember. And I never knew what ensemble or who any of those things were. I became aware of Jewish folk songs through Theodore Bikel recordings, which was a little different because he, you know, he sang everything. And yes, he was a good Jewish folk singer, so that helped. And I also liked that he also was an actor, and he was in movies, and plays, and sang, and played the guitar. So I felt like he was my kind of guy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Did you know him?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3309.0,3359.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/99","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: No. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: How did you get introduced to his music? Was that through your parents?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: It must have been, yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you remember how you first became involved with composing Jewish music?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3359.0,3368.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/100","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I have to think what my first Jewish piece was. I remember how I started composing big Jewish pieces as a young adult, but I think I did some of it earlier. I know just because of the folk music I would--I might write a little hora or something like that when I was a kid, I would write some Jewish little pieces. And I did occasionally write something that I could perform for the kids at the Workmen's Circle school on their beat-up piano. But the first really serious pieces were--are all on that recording, actually. The opera \"Mikhoels the Wise\" and also the \"Out of the Whirlwind\" was a huge piece. And then \"Ladino Songs\" also, these were all in the early '80s.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3368.0,3416.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/101","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: What happened with the operas, the Jewish operas, the 92nd Street Y had announced that they were going to be producing Jewish operas. And they had just done one by David Schiff and one by Lazar Weiner. And I went to them, and I knew David Schiff a little bit. Later on of course I knew--got to know Yehudi quite well, but I didn't know him then. And Amy Kaiser, who was conducting the operas, had some exposure to me because she had heard various pieces, chamber works of mine, and she was interested in the possibility of my writing a Jewish piece. So she said, \"you should just do this,\" and I went for it. You know, there was no money, but there was a production. And at that point I didn't care. Even now, I mean, I like to get paid for things, but I prefer a performance that's great, you know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3416.0,3469.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/102","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And like the concerto that they're doing here, \"I Will Not Remain Silent,\" was not commissioned. It was something that I was--I wrote. And after I wrote it with the help of the violinist Sharon Roffman, we met Michael Stern and Jeff Kahane got involved, and there was a small consortium commission that came after the fact, but I had already written the piece\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Already written it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3469.0,3491.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/103","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: It was taking people on board with the idea. And it wasn't a commission at the level I would normally get because I had already written the piece, and nobody was planning on it. And I much preferred commitments of performances. And my piano concerto that was just premiered in Europe by Fabio Luisi conducting and Carlo Grande, was not commissioned. I just decided I needed to write a piano concerto. So I occasionally still do this. And with the Y, to have a performance in 1982 of an opera was huge for me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3491.0,3527.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/104","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I set about looking for a librettist. And several close friends of mine had good ideas or ideas that didn't work for me. But I eventually worked with a librettist whom I did not know named Mel Gordon, who was the--running the history of theater department at New York University. And he was working already on a play about Solomon Mikhoels. And I just found that the subject was perfect. So that was--the Mikhoels opera, and then the Shabtai Zvi opera, and the \"Out of the Whirlwind,\" and \"Ladino Songs,\" were all written in a space of about five years. It was a hugely intense period.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3527.0,3563.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/105","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So recently, the Joachim Prinz piece of course. And that--I became very interested in who he was because he's related to my wife's family. And they talked about him a lot. But also when we got married, the ceremony was performed by Jonathan Prinz, who was Joachim Prinz' son. And I met Lucy Prinz, his daughter. And there's a philosopher who is fascinating, Jesse Prinz, who is a brilliant guy who writes about morality, and emotion, and the difference between nature and nurture. And that's his grandson. So I wanted to know more about these people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3563.0,3601.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/106","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And as I learned the story of Joachim Prinz, the first thing I did was set some of his text to music in an oratorio that was commissioned by the University of Michigan School for Social Work, for their 90th anniversary. And for that I wrote an oratorio where each movement is--has a text by a different either philosopher, or leader, or political person, or is a proverb from some country. So it covers a lot of the world. And I put Joachim Prinz in there. And I set that part of the speech he made before the \"I Have a Dream\" speech of Martin Luther King, Jr., where he says--Prinz says, \"the most shameful, the most disgraceful, the most tragic problem is silence.\" And I set that as a movement. And then that came back when I was writing a violin concerto, Sharon Roffman wanted me to write something for her. And I...and she wanted it to have--because we knew each other very well and still do, the idea was to have it have educational and cultural legs beyond being a concerto. And I thought this is a good opportunity to take this Joachim Prinz story. And so that's how that got started.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3601.0,3672.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/107","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then I recently got a commission to write a set of piano pieces, which I have finished now, about the Mischlinge experience, which is actually not talked about very much. And there's a pianist named Carolyn Enger whose father was declared a Mischling by the Nazis, which you know, means he was part Aryan, part Jewish, according to them. And she showed me the actual stamp of the swastika that says, \"Mischlinge class one,\" you know. And with what's going on with Trump and all of this and the idea of racial profiling and racial \"identity\" politics and all of these terrifying terms, it seemed like a very powerful thing to look at.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3672.0,3708.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/108","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I wrote four meditations on the crisis of Mischlinge identity. And each one is a mixture of some Jewish musical elements with clearly un-Jewish musical elements. One of them has a kind of Lutheran chorale feel mixed with a cantorial, and not exactly klezmer, but folksy kind of thing. When I wrote \"Mikhoels,\" the clarinetist David Krakauer was in the orchestra. And he had not embarked yet upon his klezmer career\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I remember this from the interview you did many years ago.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: It's back. It's back. Because it's such a great story.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. So he had never played...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3708.0,3748.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/109","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I think the only other klezmer he had played was also written now, at that time by David Schiff. So he played two Jewish operas at the Y as a classical player and both composers were throwing klezmer at him. So I thought--he thought, \"I better look into this.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. And then of course he became probably the most influential klezmer players...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: In a long time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. Since you brought up some of the Jewish pieces, as a composer do you approach these any differently than you would any other piece?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3748.0,3781.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/110","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, there's some--the thing that's different about it, maybe there are two things. One is that there is a vocabulary available that can become part of the piece. So for example, with the Joachim Prinz concerto, the violin which represents Prinz can use cantorial inflection, and also Jewish violin writing which people know what that means when they hear it, you know. So having a vocabulary that refers to something is a very powerful tool which could become corny, or exciting, or it can become anything, it can be a bad idea. But it's a good idea if you feel connected to this music and you're not using it on the surface. And since I grew up with it, I feel very connected to it. And it's an opportunity to use a musical vocabulary to make a point. And that is something that you don't have in every kind of composition.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3781.0,3841.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/111","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Another way it's different is that I know people who listen to it will think that there's a Jewish aspect to the music and this is a Jewish composer. So I want to do that extremely well, and I want it to be really serious, and I want it to be at a very high level. But not that I don't want that with my other pieces, but I feel like I'm representing more than myself when I do this. And that's actually a good feeling. I mean, I feel like it's coming for and of a community. And so I don't want to take it lightly. And it's not that I take other composing lightly, but it's not like I'm speaking for anyone else. And I feel like this carriers a little more weight.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3841.0,3881.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/112","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: The reactions often are like that. I mean, the Joachim Prinz piece, the concertos, have been getting very powerful reactions partly because of who Prinz was, but also because my connection to him, and the Jewish element, and the fact that people can hear it, you know, they get the story right away. So I feel like there is an extra weight, but a good weight attached to it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you mentioned you do have this sort of relationship to Prinz through your wife.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Was that how you first became aware of who he was?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3881.0,3913.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/113","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Prinz is a big name in her family, partly because my wife's father knew Joachim and my wife knew Joachim Prinz. I mean, he--when he moved to America he was here for a long time and he lived in New Jersey. In fact the violinist Sharon Roffman's mother was married by Joachim Prinz and when--she didn't know that. So she came--this is slightly off topic--but when she came home, she came home and said, \"mom, who was...\"--her mother was my daughter's first violin teacher, but anyway--she came home and said, \"mom, look, I'm playing this concerto, it's about Joachim Prinz, do you know who that is?\" And she said, \"yes, he was the one who married your parents.\" And then she had a picture.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3913.0,3954.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/114","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So he was a big figure in town, you know, and in New Jersey and New York. But I always felt strange that I--he was so important, obviously, and I didn't know the name. And when we were married by his son, that just made it even more significant. I mean, I need to know about this guy. In 2013 after I had written--well I'm not sure if it was after or not, around the time that I was working on the piece, Obama gave a speech, President Obama gave a speech from Israel in which he mentioned Joachim Prinz. And he quoted him saying, \"a neighbor is not a geographic concept, a neighbor is also a moral concept,\" you know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3954.0,3995.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/115","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And it seemed to me, of course, President Obama knows who Joachim Prinz is, because Prinz was a friend of Martin Luther King, Prinz was the one who brought Jews and Blacks together in the '60s. And as probably the most educated president we have ever had and will ever have, he would know something like that. And so it was very powerful for him to say something like that. And that just gave me even more--I need to know more.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=3995.0,4021.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/116","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Now unfortunately with Prinz, he wrote an autobiography, but it stopped fairly early in his life. And he didn't write down many of the great things that he said. So there are great recordings of him speaking on the internet. And those are wonderful. But since I didn't personally know him the way my wife did and some members of the family, I feel a little bit like I missed out. I wish I had heard him speak. I could have, but I didn't. But I felt the urge to bring his personality to more people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And how did you zero in on the--I mean, did you zero in specifically on the speech he gave at the Washington Monument in '63? It was kind of his biggest moment.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4021.0,4062.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/117","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, that speech, yes. It's his American speech. It is amazing to hear him talk because there's a very slight accent. And the use of language is magnificent. And he didn't speak English. There was no need for him to speak English in Germany. He spoke German and Yiddish and Hebrew. As far as I know, he learned his English starting in 1937 or something. And when you hear him speak in 1963, it's eloquent as can be.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. It is.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4062.0,4092.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/118","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: It's magnificent. So, and the power of the voice too, now there's an orator also because, you know, he had been that all his life. You know, that's--he was a great orator in Berlin. So also the message of not remaining silent is very powerful. It turns out two filmmakers, they're a team, and I can't think of their names right now, but they have the same first name. But anyway, maybe we should look that up. But the film about him is called, \"I Shall Not Remain Silent.\" And I saw that and I had been thinking of...I...something won't be silent. And I called them and I said, \"can I use your title?\" Not that I have to ask permission, actually, because it's a quote.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4092.0,4136.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/119","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But they said, \"oh, well, this is from I think Isaiah, I shall not remain silent.\" But then I went back, so I said, \"okay, I won't use it\" because they didn't seem to want me to use it because they didn't want confusion between a violin concerto and a movie. But then I looked it up and I thought, \"wait a minute, he says right in the speech, America must not remain silent.\" So instead of calling it \"America,\" I called it \"I...\"--which is both the speaker and the listener--\"I Will Not Remain Silent.\" And I, as I say, had already set it to music, so I wanted to use it again for this title of the silent speech--the same speech.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Can you talk a little bit about how you set it to--how do you turn a Joachim Prinz speech into a violin concerto?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4136.0,4180.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/120","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, yeah. I didn't actually attempt to set the speech. It's the message and his life. So the first movement, the orchestra sounds like Nazi Germany. It's violent, it's full of disruptions, it also has Jewish elements. So the orchestra is the whole environment of Berlin in the '30s. It has gunshots, some done in an obvious way, some less so. It has terrifying blasts of sound. And the violin, representing Prinz, is cantorial, it's urgent, it has a sense of urgency, a sense of passion, it feels like an orator. And the orchestra tries to crush it, especially at the end of the movement, and the violin remains standing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4180.0,4224.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/121","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: In the second movement, since it takes place in the civil rights period in America, I purposely used the vocabulary of both the feeling of American spirituals, of protest songs, and also in general of the kind of Black culture of music that has enriched America, which is a combination of spirituals and jazz. So because I wanted that to be the focus instead of the European focus. The music has little quotes of \"Oh, Freedom,\" but it's quite recognizable, which was sung a lot at the March on Washington. And also it has a little bit of \"We Shall Overcome.\" And, you know, unless I point out \"We Shall Overcome\" nobody hears it. But once I point it out, you hear it all over the place. And it's just because it's fragmentary.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4224.0,4273.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/122","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then also there's swirling music in the beginning which is--seems like you're about to hear a great spiritual. And you do, you hear \"Oh, Freedom.\" And then it becomes--the orchestra also has the KKK in it, it also has America's worst moments. And so there's violence in the orchestra, as well as this other thing. And most of that movement is the feeling of a rush to freedom, of a joyous rush, but it gets interrupted by violence quite often. And then it has some thoughtful introverted moments where the violin reflects on the role of violence and nonviolence, is the way I think it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You were eight years old, I guess, when the March on Washington...you were born in 1955, is that right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4273.0,4321.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/123","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you were eight when the march on Washington happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you have any memory or any...?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Was I eight or was I...I think I was almost eight. Sorry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you have any connection to the civil rights movement either through your parents or what would you...or memories of it at that time?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4321.0,4341.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/124","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. I do, actually. And the main reason--there are two reasons. I mean, my parents watched every single thing there was about it on television. But the main reason is that my father was a really good speaker, public speaker. And I didn't get to hear him more than once do this, but he went to Black churches and to synagogues and made speeches about civil rights. In other words, he was like...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Your father did?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4341.0,4364.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/125","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. And I had not obviously heard of Joachim Prinz. I am sure my father knew him. I'm positive, but I have no real way to be sure now. But I think he was modeling himself on that because he went out of his way to speak in our neighborhood throughout Long Island to Black churches and synagogues, and talk about resistance, and coming together, and Jews and Blacks being together in fighting racism. So he was very--I remember seeing typed pages on his desk of speeches and things underlined and stuff, which I would read. And they were always about that. So he was very outspoken.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4364.0,4405.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/126","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I think I must be much more like him than I can possibly know because several people have told me that. You know, I would do a concert or make a talk before a concert, which I've done many times at Lincoln Center. And on two occasions people would come up and I didn't know them, and they would say, you know, \"I knew your father, and you are exactly like him.\" And I--both times it's just an amazing feeling because I don't remember that well how that could be, except of course it makes sense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you know how he got involved with giving speeches in Black churches and things like that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4405.0,4436.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/127","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I think that his trajectory of being in theater and being a teacher, and feeling very strongly about religious things not being imposed on people, and having his own struggle with Judaism, and he had obviously a deep sense of morality coming from a secular perspective. And he wanted to make sure that that was heard. So I think I do remember that he was somebody who needed to say something. He would not remain silent. He was definitely someone who had to speak out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: When I think about suburbia in the '50s, '60s and '70s, you know, the phrase that comes to mind is kind of white flight.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Mm-hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Was it--did he have to go far to make those speeches?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: No.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Did you live in a relatively mixed area? Did...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4436.0,4479.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/128","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: No. Our neighborhood was pretty white. But there were Black neighborhoods, or mostly Black neighborhoods, really close by. So I remember one of the churches he spoke at, you could walk to in five minutes. I don't think I realized it was primarily a Black church ever, until he did that. I had no idea. Hempstead, which is a big town, is not far from West Hempstead. And Hempstead has been a Black community that thrived, and then it was an inner city, and then it was other things, it's changed. I don't know what it is now. I'm out of touch with that. The community I grew up in West Hempstead is now almost completely Orthodox and partly Hasidic community.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I feel like I should ask where you think we are now with respect to civil rights.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4479.0,4524.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/129","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, you know, if you look at America during Obama's term in office, we would say we're at a great moment in American history because we have a Black president. And it seemed like things were getting better, with the exception of a slight rise, which then became more and more serious and scary, and then it became terrifying, of this police violence. I couldn't believe this was happening. We have a Black president and the police arresting, pulling over Black people, and beating innocent people, and people dying. And I thought, what is going on? I couldn't wrap my head around how that would be happening. But now we know that there is a huge racist backlash. And we are now living in a...where this is the week that Trump is supposedly going to be inaugurated. I'm still thinking he won't be. But I mean, how many crimes do you have to commit and how many lies do you have to tell before you become president? I don't know. But--and how divisive?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4524.0,4584.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/130","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Over 1,000 race crimes, hate crimes, were committed of various types from the time he was elected until now. There are probably way more than 1,000, but last time I looked at the statistic. And obviously he's appointing to his cabinet, whether they get approved or not we shall see, but he's appointing people who are outspoken white supremacists and people who--look, we have a president that is being celebrated in the streets by the KKK. So I think this is a nightmare. It feels a little like Germany in the '30s, but it's quite different. It's different for a lot of reasons. One, there's an enormous, majority of people opposed to this. In Germany there was no such thing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4584.0,4627.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/131","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Also we have states' rights, which of course he's threatening now. But there are states that have declared themselves sanctuary states, New York, California, others, that are very powerful and very clear about the message that we will not tolerate this. There are many organizations, I believe hundreds, I've been trying to count them, but I give up, which is good, of civil rights and human rights and environmental organizations that are gearing up to not allow this, from the ACLU, to Sierra Club, and Public Citizen, and Move On, and all of these amazing organizations, and People for the American Way.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4627.0,4663.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/132","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe And we're in an ironic situation where an administration is about to come in that is opposed by a vast majority of the people. And he's bringing in an extreme racist agenda and an extreme anti-civil rights agenda, wanting to shut down free speech and threatening the press. So the only good thing is that it's not like this is being accepted and America is not a nation of onlookers right now. It is a nation of people screaming. So that's a good thing. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I know, I have to every now and then just go read an Obama speech to...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4663.0,4695.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/133","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. Exactly.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: ...to just--you know, I remember the...well I was reading the curriculum you sent the other day, which included the speech that he gave in 2013, you know, where he just urged people, you can't look at where we are today and say that we haven't made progress in the last 50 years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Right. Right.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I have to just keep kind of reminding myself.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4695.0,4715.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/134","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: You know, this brings up--Martin Luther King often referred to the moral arc of justice. Well, actually, sorry, let me say that again. Martin Luther King referred to the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice. And he didn't make that up. But he used it a lot as a metaphor. And it's been--all of a sudden it's back in the press. And my daughter who's studying at Princeton, wrote a paper on the subject of the moral arc of the universe bending towards justice, can we dismiss that because it's a religious concept, and from a secular point of view believe in nonviolence. It's a really interesting question. Because Martin Luther King and Gandhi, whom he studied, felt that nonviolence is inspired by a religious view that the world is going to end well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4715.0,4766.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/135","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But I agree with my daughter, interestingly, that you don't have to have a theological reason to believe that nonviolence is a good idea, resistance is important, and that we hope for justice, that doesn't mean we're guaranteed. And like what Obama was saying about the arc, you know, he wasn't calling it the moral arc. But that same arc, the arc towards freedom and the arc towards equality, was in a good place. But look how quickly it can go wrong. But luckily it is true that America was educated to support morality of a non-racist and inclusion--a mindset of inclusion and acceptance.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4766.0,4808.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/136","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I don't even like the word \"tolerance;\" it's not good enough. Because you tolerate something you don't like. You know, you totally accept the other, and other people, and because they're not the other. There's really only one race, it's the human race. That's scientifically true. So that--when that concept is threatened, at least now most of America is angry. And I hope that that is enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: How do you think music--I guess I'm thinking in particular of your piece, because it's an instrumental piece, people may not know the program behind it. How can music like this be an agent for social change? Is that something you think about?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4808.0,4848.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/137","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Oh, yeah, all the time. Well, I think exactly because it has no words, it is a more powerful agent. Because if I set a text by Joachim Prinz, it would be a political piece, and it would just be out there, and you know exactly what I'm saying. Even if you knew nothing about this violin concerto, you would know that there was violence in the orchestra attacking this soloist, and that the soloist is a lone person struggling. And you would know in the second movement that there was this sweep, this march towards something, and this joyous like parade which gets interrupted by violence. And at the end there's a sense of hope and struggle.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4848.0,4889.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/138","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: You would hear that the individual is some kind of leader. Or if you didn't, you would hear that the individual is some kind of philosopher-poet who is being challenged by the world. I think the message is very clear, in that because music is abstract and because music is metaphorical, it becomes a parallel to many scenarios. It is not only the scenario of Joachim Prinz or Martin Luther King, it is the scenario of every leader, everyone who believes in justice, or everyone who is speaking out against a mass--against violence, a massive crowd of violent--a mob or whatever.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4889.0,4931.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/139","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So the feeling of the poet against the mob is clear in the piece. And I think it makes it even stronger, because you could take it to a place where no one speaks English, or no one speaks Yiddish, or no one speaks German, and it would still mean something. And I think that the power of instrumental music is, yes, in our time underestimated, but I believe that it will last, and that the reason a lot of great music lasts is because the message in it, whether it's articulated in a language or not, is still very powerful.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4931.0,4957.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/140","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Jeff Janeczko: I wanted to talk a little bit more about Bruce Adolphe, the composer. I know we talked a lot about your music, various aspects of your life, a lot about your education. Who do you consider your biggest influences, musically?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4957.0,4973.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/141","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I had some very good teachers who did influence me, but they weren't my biggest influences. I mean, when I was at Juilliard in the college, I studied with Vincent Persichetti, who was a good teacher, and I studied with Milton Babbitt, who was also a very fine teacher. I don't write like Persichetti and I don't write like Babbitt, but that didn't prevent them from being great teachers. I'm not sure that the biggest influences are composers. But if that's the question first, I was a very close friend of Nicholas Maw, who was a British composer, who died a few years ago. And there were certain things about him that I found very powerfully influential. My music does not sound like his. His was very British music and inflected by Strauss and all kinds of things that have nothing to do with what I write, although I love his music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=4973.0,5028.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/142","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But what he did, what I got from him was he really didn't care what anybody else was writing. He really didn't care about trends, stylistic categories. I mean, he was so involved with his own idea of music. And of course you would think that should be true, it's obvious. But you know, you get pulled at from all these different sides, and people wanting things, or expecting things. And I found it rejuvenating in a strange way. He's much older than I am. He was. And, but I just found his incredible commitment and his story inspiring, partly because he was really popular as a young man in England as a composer. And then he sort of fell out of favor. And then he was treated like an old fashioned composer. But before he died, all of a sudden a lot of his music was being played, big commissions came in, his opera \"Sophie's Choice\" was a huge success. And he hadn't changed what he was doing. It's just the world changes and it came back to where he was. So and I thought that was really interesting to see.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5028.0,5093.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/143","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I have a fondness for composers who can play. And in my case because of the hand accident I don't play as much, but I really express myself at the piano. And I do like the relationship between performing and composing. I think that's important. And I mention that only because there are a lot of great composers who don't play. And that's fine. But I think that for audiences and also for a certain kind of relationship to music, there's something really great about a composer who also takes time to perform, even if you don't perform your own music and perform something. So you know what that feels like to go out there. I could name composers who suffered by not playing, but I'm not going to do that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Do you have a favorite composer, a desert island composer?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5093.0,5142.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/144","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Oh, dear. Well, you know, that's so difficult. It used to be...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I'm horrible at those questions, so I won't--I don't expect you to answer if you don't want to.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Well, I really find it difficult. Because if you really truly had to have only one composer, it would probably have to be Bach. And that's what almost everybody would say. Because you can live in that. That's an environment. And hardly any other composers, perhaps Mozart, there are very few composers who can provide an environment that you can thrive on for a great length of time. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I looked you up in the Grove Dictionary...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5142.0,5173.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/145","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: It's an old book. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: It was the online version, so it's new.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Oh. Hmm.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I wanted to just maybe see what you thought about how they described you, see if you agree or if you want to translate.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5173.0,5187.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/146","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: They said your style is characterized by harmonies built on extended tonal chords which relate in non-key centered progressions. Say, like Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Takemitsu, these progressions often derive from alternative modes. Lyrical melodies in his works are treated both contrapuntally and heterophonically, with the texture remaining transparent over distinct harmonic underpinnings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Okay.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5187.0,5217.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/147","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I have to tell you, I remember when that was written. And I completely agree with it for that time and for some music now. And I have to say that I was involved in it because the way the Grove writes about living composers is they call you. And I spoke to--I don't remember who wrote it. Boy I feel terrible saying that. But whoever it was, was excellent. And I said some things. I threw in the heterophony, I remember that because that's a very big part of how I think. And we went back and forth on a couple of things. And so I did--it's not that I approved that because I didn't seen the final version, but I did have a sense of where it was going. And I essentially did approve it. And I did change something, which I don't remember now what it was, but there was something that I thought could be said differently, and I--and they listened to me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5217.0,5265.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/148","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I think that even though that's--I would hesitate to say all of that because unless you are a professional musician and possibly unless you're a composer, you wouldn't know what that is. But to a composer, actually that does mean something. And it's not bad.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I was going to say, yeah. I have a background in musicology, so I mostly understand what's being said there. But how would you describe it to somebody who did not have a background? How do you...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5265.0,5291.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/149","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: That's very difficult.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: ...sort of meet somebody in an airport or something, and they ask you what you do, what kind of music you do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5291.0,5297.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/150","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: You know, that has actually happened. I have talked about my music in an airport. And I usually end up by saying, you know, \"I really--I gotta get a flight. I gotta go.\" I think describing any music to someone if they haven't heard it is practically a waste of time. But the only good way to do it is to find out what they know, and say it's like that but not, or this is closer. But that--they still are forming possibly no idea of what you're talking about or some idea which is really not accurate. And I usually end up saying, and this is what makes me feel like it's worth the conversation, look, if you're imagining music right now, you should be a composer. Because it's probably not what I wrote, and if you can hear music based on what I said, go for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: So you mentioned--you said that you actually had added the term \"heterophony,\" which was a term I did not come into contact with until I started studying ethnomusicology. It doesn't seem like something that's very prominent in sort of classical Western art music. How did you come upon that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5297.0,5362.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/151","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, the term, it describes a lot of Medieval music and some Renaissance music. And then it kind of disappears. But it also is very, as you mentioned, in a lot of folk music around the world, it's very present. Which, because if somebody's playing a melody on a string instrument and singing it slightly differently or ornamenting it, that's the beginning of heterophony, it can become much more complex. And heterophony does exist in twentieth-century classical music quite a bit. If you think of any line that spins off into other lines and comes back...you know, you find some of it in the rhythmic writing that turns into canons in Steve Reich, some of it can be thought of as heterophony before it splits, or even when it splits. You know, a canon, it is like heterophony splits into polyphony, sometimes. Sometimes heterophony is like on the edge of being polyphonic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5362.0,5424.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/152","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I like to very often use a melodic line and have it hint at splitting into counterpoint and not--and so it seems heterophonic for a long time, and then it does become counterpoint. And I still love to do that. I just find it compelling. And there are other twentieth-century composers who do it. And sometimes serialism, when it becomes like a hocket, when things are colored, different intervals or notes are colored with different timbres, but it's a single line like you might find in Stravinsky, his septet does that. There's sometimes an overlap of counterpoint, canon, and heterophony. There are places where they almost become the same thing and usually split into something else. And I like that fine line between heterophony and polyphony. So that's why I use the word because I think it means something that is true. I do think about it when I write.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You do. So and you also mentioned that you thought that definition was--it was true for the time it was written. So how do you feel your music has changed or how would it not be applicable now?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5424.0,5494.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/153","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Okay. Well, I would say a lot of it is still applicable, but I wouldn't say...I would say nothing is wrong, but a lot is missing now. To describe what I do and not get into my very strong feeling that there are metaphors that can be communicated, and that structural things, and I try to create parallels to real life experience. This is really important to me now. So while that describes basically my harmony fairly well, I just think it could go a lot further in talking about what distinguishes me from someone else. But I also think that some of the composers mentioned were truer then than now. Stravinsky and Takemitsu are not as true now as they were then.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5494.0,5543.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/154","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I haven't thought about who I would sound like now, but I--there's more distance from that than there was. Stravinsky was a huge influence on my early music, and less, and less, and less. But that's only because I used it up for myself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And you mentioned that you think a lot about the music's connection to the real world.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5543.0,5564.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/155","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Well, like with the Jewish music, like the vocabulary that makes Prinz alive in the violin solo, so in a way the Jewish vocabulary is part of that. But also I've been writing a lot of neuroscience inspired music. So I have several pieces inspired by the writings of Antonio Damasio, who's here in LA, and who runs with his wife Hanna, the Brain and Creativity Institute. And I met Antonio in 1993 at the Aspen Institute where I was a guest speaker and he was a guest speaker. And I was so moved and impressed by his talk that--since mine was scheduled for the next day, I rewrote a lot of what I was going to say to address some issues that he brought up because I'd never heard anybody talk about the biology of the brain, and the mind, and how that affects emotions, and how that might affect a performer, or a poet. I thought this is amazing.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5564.0,5620.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/156","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I didn't have time to study that or anything to study it with, but I had time to react to what he said. And because I reacted and I--a lot of what I said reflected his talk from the previous day, when it was over, he came up to me and said, \"did you rewrite your talk last night?\" And I said, \"yes.\" He said...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: He said that exactly?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5620.0,5638.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/157","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. And he said, \"that's amazing.\" He said, \"you did a pretty good job.\" And he said, \"what's your science background?\" I said, \"mostly this series of talks, that's my science background.\" So we became friends because he was interested to hear my artistic viewpoint on certain science things. He's a big music fan. And then over the years I started creating parallel--musical parallels for scientific concepts, just not that they are exact, but that they can be communicated and reach an audience. And probably the best known of these experiments--they're not experiments--the best known of these pieces is called, \"Self Comes to Mind.\" The title is Antonio's, but his book with that title came out several years after the piece. But he did give me the title.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5638.0,5683.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/158","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I asked Antonio to write some kind of poem or reflection on something that interests him that I could then turn into a piece of music without setting it, just it would be the catalyst. And so he wrote a kind of poetic reflection on the evolution of the organ of a brain into the concept of a mind. It was a beautiful thing to write about. And he did a great job of course. So I took that and discussing it with Antonio, I thought, well what if we have some great soloist or solo instrument, let's say, be the protagonist's brain, and then somehow the rest of the music around it is the networks firing, the neurons, and all the things you talk about. And somehow it will parallel the evolution that you're talking about from something simple, to something more and more complex, to something rich, and something that is emotional and has conflict.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5683.0,5738.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/159","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So he liked the idea. We settled on the idea of a cello if I could get Yo-Yo. That's the way--he wanted Yo-Yo. But I grew up with Yo-Yo. We're the same age. So I sent him an email saying, \"do you know the work of Antonio Damasio? Would you be interested to play a piece if I write something based on that?\" And he responded very quickly, \"I love Damasio's books, I hand them out as presents, I'm really into this.\" So that's what happened. And then it was Yo-Yo who said, \"instead of a piano or an orchestra or anything normal, can we have lots of percussion instruments?\" I thought that was great. So that's what we had, two percussionists playing tons of instruments surrounding the cello.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5738.0,5772.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/160","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And that piece has been performed, and there's quite a lot, and there's a film that goes with it. And there are actually two different films now. And the film that was made by a woman named Ioana Uricaru, is all made of brain scans that are from the lab of Hanna Damasio. So there's a lot of science involved with this. So this business about real life, it also has to do with parallels for things that people think about, whether it's history, philosophy, biology. I just find that really fascinating.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That's a good segue because you are involved in quite a few different activities as a composer and musician. I know that's something you want to talk about today. What all are you involved with?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5772.0,5819.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/161","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I just finished writing a piece for cello with sounds from outer space and mezzo-soprano. Not necessarily in that order. And there's an artist named Katherine Doyle, Kate Doyle, who is a fairly well-known painter, but she also does sculpture and installations. And she was very close to Piers Sellers, who was an astronaut and NASA scientist who died very recently. And she wanted to create something for him, which now is going to be in his memory, that was artistic. And she is going to do the visual aspect of it. And then she was looking for a composer and eventually came to me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5819.0,5863.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/162","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And in this piece, it looks at how information from satellites in outer space, like our GPS, but also much more complex things, how it gets turned from information, into digital information, into visual or sonic information. So her installation visually is going to deal with that. And what I've done is write an emotional story around being in outer space, being lonely, being ill, all the things that really happen. And the voice of the mezzo is her. We made it very personal. And there's only one line of text, even though the mezzo sings a lot, most of it is not with text, but the one line that is texted is, \"I saw how infinitely precious and how fragile the world is.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5863.0,5917.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/163","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And that was from an interview that Piers Sellers was giving about what it's like to be in outer space. And he said that and then followed it by a huge speech about climate change, in which he said that if you see the earth--and you can find if you look up Piers Sellers, and not Peter Sellers, P-i-e-r-s, you can find pictures that he took or were taken of him by a camera from a satellite of him in outer space, and you can see the Earth, and you can see this very thin beautiful layer of atmosphere in which he says that that's all we have, that atmosphere. And it's incredibly amazing that it is what it is. And the \"infinitely precious\" concept is what I've called the piece. And it's going to be recorded before it's performed because we need the recording to be part of the installation. So that's happening fairly soon with a cellist Sophie Shao, and the mezzo-soprano Teddy Hanslowe, Theodora Hanslowe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5917.0,5979.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/164","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Let's see, I'm writing an opera with Richard Powers, great novelist, wrote \"The Time of Our Singing.\" And he wrote \"Orfeo\" more recently, which is a very powerful novel--they're both great novels, and many other books. And we met because we were supposed to--actually we haven't met, we've only met on phone and email. But we were supposed to be giving a keynote speech together at a science and the arts conference. And we were going to be the two arts people giving an arts presentation before the scientists. But he became ill and had to cancel that appearance, so I did it without him.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=5979.0,6017.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/165","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But we started to have an email exchange in which I said, \"in your new book 'Orfeo' you have a fictitious opera. You describe what it's like to write an opera. The opera is produced and you describe what that's like, and then you have the reaction. And then it's so real and so great. And so do you want to write an opera?\" And he said, \"if this is an offer, I will say yes.\" So we've been working on an opera. And the opera has to do with a science teacher in a high school, and one of his students is very religious. And it has to do with both a problematic relationship between them, and science and religion itself. And it's pretty powerful. I don't know when we're--again this is a non-commissioned, no opera company in sight yet, but we're just working on it, and have--the libretto is mostly done and it's very, very moving.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I hope it gets a performance.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6017.0,6066.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/166","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I'm pretty sure it will.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: How did you get involved with Lincoln Center? You give these wonderfully long talks about chamber music. I've watched a couple on YouTube, where you can talk for one and a half, maybe two hours, about a Bartok string quartet...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6066.0,6084.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/167","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes, right. One movement, no less. Yes, I'm about to do another series. I've been doing those now for almost 25 years. What happened with Lincoln Center was David Shifrin was and still is the music director, artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. And in 19--maybe '89 or something, maybe earlier, '86, I had a commission from the Chamber Music Society that was just because I was a composer. I wasn't working there. And I was commissioned by Fred Sherry, who was the artistic director for a while there. And Fred said, \"why don't you write something for David Shifrin because we need a new piece for clarinet with strings or something like that.\" And Shifrin was looking to expand the repertoire of clarinet and string quartet.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6084.0,6133.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/168","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So I wrote a piece and Fred was in it as well, Fred Sherry and David Shifrin. And we did it at Chamber Music Northwest. And I introduced the piece by talking for about 15 to 20 minutes. And David said after the concert that a lot of people asked if I would talk about other pieces during the summer because they understood what I was saying, and very often they don't when somebody gives an introduction. So I started doing that. I introduced the Mozart concert, and I introduced other people's music. And I had questions with the audience about the style. And then David was appointed the artistic director of the Chamber Music Society. And he just called me and said, \"do you want to come? I need someone to do the kind of thing you do, would you like to talk about music to the audience because I think it would work.\" So that's how that started.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6133.0,6180.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/169","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then eventually I had various jobs there. I was the education director for a while, I was the education advisor, I started the family concert series that I still do. For a while I ran the new music program. But I've been there 25 years and had many different positions there. And it's kind of like a second home to me. There have been several different artistic directors and executive directors, but I'm still there.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You've done a lot of children's music, this is another one of the many hats you wear as a composer.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6180.0,6206.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/170","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I really enjoy this. Now this I think it started again with Amy Kaiser at the 92nd Street Y in New York, where she invited me to write some pieces for the New York Chamber Orchestra, which no longer exists. It was conducted primarily by Gerard Schwarz, but other people. And they were starting a family concert series. And Amy Kaiser was the conductor of that. And she said, \"how about some music where the audience does something, because it's going to be kids.\" So I wrote a piece called, \"Ta Woop!\" in which the audience says, \"ta woop,\" every so often, but they have to listen really carefully to the music so they hear their cue. And the kids really got a kick out of this. And I wrote a piece where the kids clap and stamp or sing based on what they hear. So again the idea was to get them to listen really well.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6206.0,6251.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/171","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: After writing--there were three of these pieces for kids and orchestra--I loved the reaction of the kids being so open and so involved and enthusiastic. So I took other opportunities and wrote some other pieces for kids and families. But I--these pieces are sophisticated in a lot of ways. I don't dumb them down from what I would normally do. They're not necessarily as big. The topics are more appealing, like I have \"Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto,\" and \"Tough Turkey in the Big City.\" But the other thing is that I started to get a lot of commissions for these things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6251.0,6286.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/172","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then when the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra commissioned a big full concert of one piece, they wanted a big children's piece, I got to know my old friend again, Julian Fifer, someone I had known for years at Juilliard before and through Orpheus. And he left Orpheus as the executive director after 37 years. And he said, \"do you want to start an education company?\" And I said, \"sure.\" So we started the thing originally called Polly Rhythm Productions named after my parrot whose name is Polly Rhythm. And then we eventually changed it to the Learning Maestro so people wouldn't have to ask us what Polly Rhythm meant.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6286.0,6321.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/173","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And together we have programmed, curated, I've composed and worked with writers, many, many pieces for family audiences that are educational, about--just like the neuroscience pieces are for adults, I'll write something--I have a piece about wind energy for kids that I wrote for the Imani Winds. Of course, winds, you know. And I have a piece--oh there are so many kids pieces, one, \"Red Dogs and Pink Skies,\" a celebration of Paul Gaugin, which--of his art, because he defended his art by saying it was like music, it's not meant to be realistic, it's supposed to be an experience, an aesthetic experience, not an exact duplicate of something.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6321.0,6363.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/174","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And so I take opportunities that have come from various institutions, like the Field Museum in Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And Julian and I have created educational opportunities, pieces of music, collaborations with other artists and other schools or institutions. And this is still going, ongoing project.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And you've mentioned a couple times your fictitious character, Inspector Ear, is that right?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Inspector Pulse.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Inspector Pulse, sorry.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Inspector Pulse. He's a private ear. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: A private ear, that's what it is.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6363.0,6395.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/175","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. He's a private ear. He's a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Get Smart, you know, just that close--and Clouseau, all these people. So he comes together--once a year he comes together in Tully Hall. And he investigates musical problems, like the rhythm is all wrong, or people play like robots, or because they were taught by robots. And that's coming up next week actually. Or there's been a retro-inversionary implosion and therefore music doesn't sound right and he has to fix it. And so basically he goes on an investigative journey to figure out what is wrong and how can I fix it. And the kids have a great time. And a lot of wonderful music is performed by terrific musicians. So that's another part of the family concerts.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6395.0,6441.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/176","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: The family concerts are usually either Inspector Pulse, one of my kids pieces, or a celebration of one composer. So I have pieces--kids concerts about Beethoven, kids concerts about Mozart. And there are scripts that take an unusual point of view. For example, for the Mozart one, Mozart himself never appears, but his father Leopold Mozart is the star of the show. And he explains to the audience that it's really all the parents who do everything, and Mozart was who he was because of me, this sort of thing. And then he pulls kids out of the audience and turns them into great musicians. Of course they're all plants. And they're all very highly talented kids who've been practicing their brains off and prepared for the concert, but most of the kids in the audience, this is overwhelming. And then they--we always tell the truth at the end. But they're fun shows like that. And so that is also now in its 25th year. And I occasionally appear with other institutions and do a kids' concert too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: But mostly at Tully Hall. It's not something that gets programmed around other places...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6441.0,6501.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/177","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Not exactly the same thing. But I will bring, especially my pieces, \"Tyrannosaurus Sue\" and many of the other pieces have been done in Chicago by the Chicago Chamber Musicians. There's an orchestra in Florida that has done every single one of my kids' pieces multiple times. I've never been down there when they do it, but they're always programming them. So they have a life, this stuff has a life of its own, which I'm very happy about. In fact the dinosaur piece has been performed by over 60 orchestras around the world, including in Australia, in Portugal. I mean, it's really very interesting. So I'm glad that happens.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. And then of course the Piano Puzzlers, one of my favorites. How did those come about?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6501.0,6546.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/178","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I'm smiling because probably the thing I get asked the most in my life is, \"how did the Piano Puzzlers appear?\" And it makes sense. These are certainly the most popular thing I've ever been involved in. They have over a million listeners--over a million listeners a week. There are almost 200,000 podcast subscribers. And basically it's a party trick that I've taken to a very advanced level, because I know a lot of pianists and composers who do things like this. But instead of doing it the way you do it at a party, I write them out meticulously and I refine them so they have many layers of jokes, and so they're not just an improv.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6546.0,6585.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/179","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But they started that way. At Juilliard there would be other musicians who would take \"Happy Birthday\" and play it 10 different ways, and so would I. And then someone else would do it. And it would be like fun competition. And a lot of people were really good at it. So when I was starting to teach theory at Juilliard, first in the Pre-College, I found that a lot of musicians are resistant to studying theory, especially performers, because it takes some magic away, they think. So I thought, well let's make it more fun and more mysterious, and then we can take some layers away. And the Piano Puzzlers, which were not called that, were originally a homework assignment where I would say, here's a tune, let's everybody try to write it so it sounds like Brahms, just this tune, and let's see what we do. And then we figure out what they did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6585.0,6629.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/180","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And a lot of them had really good ears, and they would get close, and we would figure out, well what are the stylistic elements, what is the mood, what is the texture, what is it that you did. So I would always feel, and I still believe this as a teacher, if I ask my students to do something, I also do it. I never just say it's your job, I have something else to do. So every time I gave them an assignment, I would also do it. And then I started to collect some really funny things. And then when I got to Lincoln Center, I realized that they were a perfect way to entertain a large audience that was coming to a lecture, but they didn't really want a serious lecture right before a concert. So I would say, \"we're about to hear some Mozart, and on the second half is Stravinsky. Now what if they wrote a piece together based on a tune by Haydn in the middle of the concert?\" So I would do something crazy like that. The audience would love it. And then I'd deconstruct it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6629.0,6678.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/181","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And a woman named Anya Grundmann from National Public Radio was in the audience one time. And she came up to me and said, \"you gotta do that on the radio.\" So I did it--originally it was just a one off. And Fred Child interviewed me. And then they said, \"you seem to have more of these in your bag sticking out,\" you know, so I did a few more. And then I said to Fred, \"you know, I can keep doing this.\" And so we had to come up with a name for it and decided to make it a game show. And we came up with lots of different names, but Piano Puzzlers was the only one that wasn't somehow offensive. Like there was Keyboard Collisions. And they said, \"well, you know, that's violent.\" There were all kinds of problems. But Piano Puzzlers, kind of fun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That was PC enough for everyone.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6678.0,6720.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/182","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah. That's right. Right. And it didn't conjure up any bad images. And so now it's 15 years. In 2017 it's the 15th year of Piano Puzzlers. I should add to that, that working with Fred Child has made it so I want to keep doing it. Because he's really good at guessing them. He's great with the audience. He's very inspiring to be on the radio with and lots of fun. And he makes it feel like we're Click and Clack, the \"Car Talk\" brothers. If I were doing it by myself, I think I would've stopped a long time ago. But having a Click Clack relationship with Fred is really fun.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: You mentioned when we were corresponding a bit before you came here, you wanted to talk about the sadness and the comedy in your life and how that has affected your work. I wanted to give you the opportunity to do that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6720.0,6769.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/183","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Okay. Well, it is true that some people who know my music only know the funny stuff, like Piano Puzzlers or something for kids. And some people have only heard the Joachim Prinz concerto, or the piano concerto which is extremely serious, or some of my string quartets which tend to be dark. And then they find out that there's this other kind of stuff. And they think, \"what is this, are you a split personality?\" I mean, I think all of us have a wide range of possibilities as creators. But I have tended to isolate these things a little bit, so that because I write so much music for educational purposes for kids, this is a great place to put comedy. And, you know, my childhood was fantastic except for the deaths of my parents. If you want to--in other words, there were two tragedies. And then my hand accident. So there were three tragedies.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6769.0,6821.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/184","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But other than that, it was a loving family, it was a fun place to be, it was cultured, we did great things. So, and my father was extremely funny. And so I grew up feeling good. And then he died, and then my mother died, and I had this hand accident before--right before she died. And I felt the full weight of these losses and the tragedy of it. And at the same time I never lost the sense that I wanted to be Danny Kaye when I grew up. My three favorite people of the outside world were Danny Kaye, Victor Borge, and Leonard Bernstein. And I wanted to be all of them. So in a way I've tried to do that. I mean, I do a lot of educating in the Leonard Bernstein--not in his tradition, but in the trajectory that comes out of that tradition. I do keyboard comedy, which is not the same as Victor Borge, but that's who first gave me the thought that you could go up in front of an audience and do something and they might laugh. And I thought, \"okay, I love that.\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6821.0,6883.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/185","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then with the Bernstein there was also the serious composing. And Danny Kaye, I must say, my Inspector Pulse character owes a lot to Danny Kaye. So I feel like the comedy that I wanted to do, I wanted to be funny, but I also wanted to not ignore the things that made me see the tragedy in life firsthand. And so balancing that is difficult. But it also keeps me going, those two things.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: We talked a little about musical influences. But it seems to me you have probably a lot of intellectual influences as well. You have this suite on your recent recordings, \"Seven Thoughts Considered as Music,\" which has some pretty heavy stuff in it. And you have, you know, your involvement with Antonio Damasio and what have you. Is there a--is there a pantheon of authors or philosophers or thinkers that have influenced what you do? Or is...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6883.0,6948.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/186","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I think again the idea of being interested in as many things as possible comes from my father who was a very big reader. And since he broke away from Orthodoxy into a secular community, part of what defined that was he needed to know everything about what was available, who was doing what, what were they saying and reading. And so I think I inherited that, or really to be honest I learned it, I learned that love of reading. And even though my education was not exclusively but primarily musical, because you know, I went to Juilliard, and academics at Juilliard tend to be just the humanities that support the arts and things related to it a little bit. It's changed a lot. I think they have more now. But it was, you know, I would at Juilliard, if it was not music, it would be visual arts, or some cultural aspect, or a language, or perhaps reading poetry. But it was not math and science.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=6948.0,7013.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/187","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And so I've always been, like my father, and consciously like my father, open to interesting ideas and things. And I read a lot. And if I read something that matters to me, I usually try to make a project out of it or investigate it further. And like with Antonio Damasio, meeting him has turned into now a 20-something-year relationship, an intellectual relationship. And I know people--everyone who works with him--or no, I shouldn't say that--I know many people who work with him. And I read other neuroscientists. And I care a lot about that now. And I've been to neuroscience conferences where he's not present, just because I am now someone who, if there's going to be an artistic aspect of neuroscience discussed, I usually get invited now because of my work with him. And then I meet other people in science or a philosopher.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7013.0,7063.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/188","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Or for example, I've been twice to the Salzburg Global Seminar, which is an internationally organized think tank on various subjects. It's usually on politics or social sciences, but it can be on the environment, it could be on anything. And they did one on music and music education. I went to that. And I went to the one on science and the arts. And you have to be invited to be--I mean, you could go just by paying, but if you want to go and participate, you have to be invited. So I--luckily I think, again, because of Antonio originally, that profile that came out of that, I was invited to these two things. And there I met all kinds of people that are fascinating.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7063.0,7107.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/189","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And one for example is KAL [Kevin Kallaugher], the political cartoonist for The Economist. He was there to talk about science and the arts, but he didn't really have much to say about science. But he was illuminating for a neuroscientist. It's always interesting to see, how do you make people laugh about terrifying subjects? What is funny about the world crisis? And this guy has a great sense of satire. And he knows that it's a business as well as a talent. And he drew pictures of famous people and explained how to make them funny and how to draw you in. So KAL and I have done projects now. We're about to do another one. We've done--one was called \"Cartoons and Tunes, Tunes and Cartoons.\" And it was Piano Puzzlers and his cartoons. And the idea was, how do you take what people know and turn it into something funny? I mean, what makes this humorous?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7107.0,7156.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/190","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And also from a scientific point of view a little bit, not that we're qualified to discuss it, but certainly to raise the questions. You listen to a piece of music and it seems very beautiful and serious. And then you find out that there's a tune in there, and now it's funny. That's a strange thing. And you can't hear it as serious anymore. And also he talked about how a face can be deconstructed and put back together so it's both recognizable and hilarious. And so that sort of thing. We're doing it again. We're having another--coming together about human rights from his perspective and my perspective, and also with some other musicians from the Silkroad are coming, and the Global Musicians Workshop.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7156.0,7194.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/191","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And we're doing this for a festival I run called, \"Off the Hook Arts,\" in Colorado. It meets every summer and a little bit in the winter. We're actually meeting in a couple of weeks in January. Jeptha Bernstein, who is a violinist, is my co-artistic director. And we are there trying to forge relationships with music and all the other interests that people have, just like what I like to do, which is an outgrowth of that habit.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Back to kind of music and the connection to the real world that you've brought up a couple of times...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7194.0,7230.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/192","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. You mean should I mention more? Or you're just saying that?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I'm just...[crosstalk]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe:  Okay. Yeah. Right, right. No. I'm really into that.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: No. I just--I wanted to make sure I covered all the aspects of...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: I think we did very well.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: From what I know, you know, the aspects of what you're involved in, Lincoln Center, the Piano Puzzlers, children's music, the many different things you do in terms of...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7230.0,7255.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/193","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: The Jewish stuff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And you did--a couple of Jewish pieces did find their way on to your Naxos album from last year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Oh, yeah. Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: How did that...one of them is a--well, it's an ode to Chopin sort of album...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: There's a hora in there. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. The hora.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7255.0,7277.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/194","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, you know, I--the funny thing about the hora, it's just that Carlo Grande, the Italian pianist, commissioned two pieces from me. And he said, the only thing he requested is that it would be nice if one of the pieces had to do with the repertoire he normally plays because then it would be easy to program. So that's fine. So I thought he plays a lot of Chopin. So I came up with the Chopin Dreams concept. And some of the movements are based on real pieces by Chopin, but they're not Puzzlers, they're dreams and explorations. And then I thought, \"well I need to do another one, I don't want to do another movement like that.\" So I thought, \"if Chopin were alive today, living in New York City...\" and I thought of certain jazz things he might do. But then I just had this funny thought, \"what if he were playing at a friend's bar mitzvah?\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7277.0,7323.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/195","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I said, \"hey, Frederic, can you play a hora?\" What would--now it doesn't sound anything like Chopin, that one. But the idea is to take a hora, which is a dance form, and just stick it in the set with Chopin because he worked in dance forms almost exclusively. Not exclusive, but almost, you know, so many of them. And I mean, certainly there are ballades and polonaise is a dance though, and mazurka is a dance, and the waltz is a dance. So these--this is a huge part of his output. And I thought, \"if he were playing a 2016\"--at the time, 2016--\"hora, what would that sound like?\" So it's not a matter of Chopin, it's just the idea. And it's a funny way to end the piece because it's very unexpected.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7323.0,7369.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/196","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I found that in Europe there were quite a few people, they like the whole thing, but they said, \"so what is a hora anyway?\" So which is funny though because it's a European--it's a Romanian-European thing. But it was just not a Jewish crowd and there were no Romanians there. They knew the word, but they thought, \"what is it about that that makes it a hora?\" And the rhythm, [makes rhythmic sounds], it goes through the whole thing. But they weren't sure what that was.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: I caught that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7369.0,7393.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/197","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. Of course, of course.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: But yeah. And then a Puzzler that's based on \"Hevenu Shalom Aleichem.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Oh, yes. Yes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: And a Chopin...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7393.0,7404.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/198","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yes. That one is really Chopin and Jewish music together. Yes. \"Hevenu Shalom Aleichem,\" and it's based on the B-Minor Prelude. I think there the--like with a lot of the Puzzlers, I'm looking at a composer's work and thinking, \"where do I see a shape that reminds me of a tune?\" And sometimes, you know, so many tunes have triads at the beginning, or have a 5th, or it's like very, very simple. But still you have to not let that make it impossible, and you can't say it's just everything, because then you can't think of anything. So you have to just--whatever pops into my head first, I try, because that usually is--it comes to the surface for a reason, which makes it easier to explore.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7404.0,7449.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/199","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And that just happened one time I was playing that Chopin Prelude for the purposes of finding a Puzzler to go with it. And I actually used it three different times. I did Shalom--\"Shalom Aleichem,\"--\"Hevenu Shalom Aleichem.\" And I did--what is it? \"There's No Business Like Show Business,\" for some reason that fit in there. I don't know. And then there was another one, I don't even remember. But you know, sometimes they fit together and sometimes I smash them together and force them together. Which, you know, considering all the--in hip hop and pop music, all this mashup, you know, mixing, the Puzzlers seem to be more contemporary to some people than I think they are, because they sound like mashups. So instead of saying \"puzzle,\" you call it a \"mixup\" or a \"mashup,\" they go, \"oh really, it's something brand new, brand new concept.\" I mean, the quodlibet has been around for years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Speaking of contemporary, do you--are there any artists or composers you're particularly enamored of or...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7449.0,7509.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/200","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, so many. I like a lot of people's work. You know, I did write a piece about the visual arts with--influenced by my brother's taste. My brother's a very fine painter, who works in other media as well. But I got a commission a few years ago to write a piece based on the visual arts. And he was really pushing for the abstract expressionist school. And so I--looking at all the books that he had in his house, I settled on Chris---sorry, I settled on Mark Rothko, and de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock, and Barnett Newman, and Philip Guston, and that's it. And so I was doing this. And then I realized in order to show the work publicly with a paying audience, I need permission to show these paintings.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7509.0,7568.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/201","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So it turned out to be very easy. There was a lot of, \"yes, you may do it,\" or \"send me a certain small amount of money.\" Nobody gave me a hard time. But one email I wrote to the Rothko estate, and I said I wanted to use a Rothko--series of Rothko paintings for this. And the email that came back was, \"hey Bruce, I listen to your music, I know you live in my neighborhood, and this would be really fun, and one of my kids is your daughter's age. Christopher Rothko.\" What? I couldn't believe it. I said, \"what is happening?\" So he said, \"why don't you come over for a drink.\" So he turned out to live on 83rd Street, I live on 89th Street. He's a really serious fan of music and he goes to Lincoln Center all the time. So he thought it was amusing. So we became friends. And our families became friends.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7568.0,7616.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/202","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then I realized he hadn't heard the piece because I hadn't finished that movement. So when I finished the movement, I said, \"you want a score?\" He said, \"yeah\"--he could read a score. He was a serious musician. I sent it to him. And he wrote back an email I'll never forget which is, \"I really love this, and I have to say I'm glad because what if I didn't? What would we do now?\" [laughter]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. As someone who's involved in so many different facets of the music world, specifically the classical music world, I'm wondering where you see things headed in terms of--we're seeing...in the midst of pretty major changes in the way people consume new music, and the way people hear about new music, and we're hearing about orchestras struggling to keep their lights on and the seats filled and that sort of thing. Do you have a...?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7616.0,7670.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/203","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I think it's--my view of the musical future is nonspecific but positive. In other words, what I think is great is that more people know more music now than ever before because it's so available. So yes, it is a huge problem for the music industry that so much music is free. Downloadable, streamable, you can get it anywhere, so why do you want to go support something with a big expensive ticket for, or why do you want to go buy a CD even when you can probably find that music for free? Well, those problems are real, but what's good about it is you meet young people who know jazz and hip hop and classical and music from India. It's just unbelievable. They know so much music.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7670.0,7717.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/204","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I think there's a really good change happening of music becoming less border-like, like composers without borders is where we're going, you know. A lot of young composers, and even older ones today, have come out of a different kind of music than where they end up. Yo-Yo Ma and his Silkroad thing have been fantastic, to give a concert that has throat singing, and a sitar player, and then the Ravel piano trio. I mean, that's a great concert. And people love it. I've just written a piece for kids that uses shinobue, which is a Japanese flute--but not the shakuhachi--Irish percussion, a bass trombone, a keyboard, and a cello. And I'm using people connected to Silkroad and the Global Musicians Workshop. And the shinobue part can be played on a regular flute if you don't have a shinobue player. And the percussion part is written out for any drums at all, but the guy who's premiering it is Shane Shanahan, who is one of Yo-Yo's percussion players.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7717.0,7782.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/205","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Kaoru Watanabe is playing the shinobue. I had never even heard a shinobue. I mean, I--after I heard it, I realized I had, but I couldn't picture it. So he played it over the phone, and we talked about it, and then I Googled and saw pictures of him playing all these instruments. It is quite different. And the cellist is Mike Block, who improvises jazz and world music, and plays in different modes and scales from around the world. And as Yo-Yo called him, and this is really germane here, he called him a cellist for the twenty-first century because this guy plays--if you want to hear music from any country, he's probably heard it and he can probably improvise in that style. That's amazing. But there are more and more people like that. And he actually started a camp for string players on improvisation.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7782.0,7828.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/206","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And then it all comes around because I called him and asked him if he wanted to be in a video I was making for my book, \"The Mind's Ear,\" which is about improvisation, which I originally wrote in 1991. He said, \"of course I'd like to, that's what got me started.\" So I thought, I can't believe this, I'm going to find an improv guru, and it turns out when he was a kid, because he's a lot younger than me, my book helped him out. So I think that that direction of performers and composers who are the same person, people who can improvise and also read music, this is not what we used to have. And I think the well-rounded musician who can do a little bit of everything, it's popping up everywhere. And it's going to be different. But I think it's going to be very healthy. So that's good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: It's a positive view.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7828.0,7875.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/207","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Yeah.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah. Do you think about your own legacy much? I know you have many more years of music writing ahead of you.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Sometimes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Yeah? What do you want people to write about Bruce Adolphe when...","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7875.0,7894.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/208","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: You know, I don't think about it that way. I don't think, \"okay, after I'm dead, does anyone play my music?\" I actually never thought about that. I have thought about the fact that a lot of great composers when they die have a year of performances and then nothing for a long time. And I think, wow, even really popular composers. And then they come back, or they don't. I don't know. It's very hard to figure out. It's not something--see I try to focus on projects. I try not to dwell on things that can't be answered and are just going to slow me down. But the answer really is, I try to do the best thing I can do that's meaningful. I really care about something being meaningful. And of course any good piece of music has meaning in the world. But if it also has a message or a purpose that can make it practical, like the Joachim Prinz piece, I feel even better about it.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7894.0,7948.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/209","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: I'm perfectly happy to hear a great violin concerto that is just music, of course. And I love that. But I find for myself a great satisfaction in trying to connect music to life in a way that an audience can understand and come away with something else. And I think that is also helping other composers, I hope, because audiences think, wow, music really does connect with something. Then they go, here's something else, and they bring themselves to it, I hope. So I don't know where that's going. But I try not to torment myself with unanswerable questions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: Did you ever do anything besides music?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7948.0,7989.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/210","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: Well, I have done a fair amount of theater. I've actually acted in a few things. I'm not an actor, but I am good on stage. It's not the same thing. I have a cousin who's a great actor, Peter Friedman. I do a lot of acting on stage and I love it. And the first time I realized I could really take it far was I was holding auditions at Lincoln Center to find somebody who could play the piano and be funny and charming and play the character that turned out to be Inspector Pulse. And so I--when I first thought of Inspector Pulse, I was 36 years old. That's important to the story. And I called Juilliard and I said, \"can you find me an actor who, you know, like a young actor who could do this?\"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=7989.0,8034.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/211","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: So they sent me a bunch of recent graduates. And the first three or four were very handsome, and very beautifully spoken, and very poetic, and they were more like they should play Hamlet or Darcy, or something. They were not what I was looking for. I was looking for a Dudley Moore type. And then this one guy showed up who was funny and he could play the piano a little bit, not well enough for what I was thinking. And he did the script well. I said, \"let me show you how to do this because I think you can do it.\" So I do the whole thing. And at the end--and he's 22--he says to me, \"does this character have to be young or can he be old?\" And I said, \"what do you mean by that?\" He said, \"well if he can be old, why don't you do it?\" And I said, \"well I just want you to remember two things now about this day. You just lost a job because I think I will do it. And number two, when you're 36, remember that you said it to someone old.\" Anyway, so that was a long time ago. I'm still doing this character","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=8034.0,8090.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/212","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: But also I was in a play written by Kurt Vonnegut, where they needed a--it only was given one reading, but the idea was he wanted a character who played the piano, who could play the role of a guy in a radio station, old time radio station, who would be an announcer, and do the commercials, and play the piano, and also have lines to say. And the director of it had been in something of mine as an actor and dancer. And he called me up and said, \"look, I need someone who can play the piano and say these lines, you want to do it?\" I said, \"absolutely.\" Because that was the first legitimate--I didn't have anything to do with creating it. And I had a blast.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=8090.0,8129.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/213","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I was with really--some really terrific actors. And there's a guy, I think his name was John Fiedler, a very well-known comic actor, not sure if he's alive now, but he's in a lot of movies with Jack Lemmon and that era, directed by Billy Wilder. He was in this thing. So I was sitting talking to some old-time comedian who was in it, who I thought was just great and hilarious. And John Fiedler, who I had seen in many movies, was sitting over here. And all he was doing was saying--the whole bus trip out to the performance--was saying, \"got a match, got a match?\" Over and over. And he had a lot more lines than that. And I said to this guy, I said, \"have you ever worked with him before?\" He said, \"a couple times.\" I said, \"well what is this? He's saying 'got a match?' over and over?\" He said, \"trust me, he will get a laugh with that.\" And there's nothing funny about the line, but when we get there--and so what happened was, whatever it was, when he said \"got a match?\" for some reason the whole audience broke into stitches. Because there was something that he did.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=8129.0,8190.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/214","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And I just never forgot that because I thought this guy really knew this art of timing, to such a way that he could predict a huge laugh, and he wanted it to be great. And I just thought that was a great moment. It's not a Hamlet moment, but it's still a really good moment. I'm still friends with a lot of the actors I went to school with at Juilliard; Boyd Gaines, Tom Robbins, Kathleen McNenny. And I was friends with David Ogden Stiers. I knew Robin Williams briefly, not as a friend, but he was there when I was there, and everyone who was there knew Robin Williams. He was a huge personality in the school. And Christopher Reeves [sic]. So I stayed in touch with some--and Henry Stram, a really great actor. I stayed in touch with these people. And then it turned out my cousin Peter Friedman knows a lot of the same people.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=8190.0,8244.0"},{"id":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163/transcript/44953/annotation/215","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Bruce Adolphe: And so that was the one thing I almost did. I was actually offered a part in \"Hair\" by Tom O'Horgan, when it was brand new. I at the time was 19 or 20. I had very long hair. And I was kind of athletic looking. And I had been in a rock musical that I wrote for the La MaMa Theater. It was a different part of my life. I only wrote one rock musical. It had a lot of Vivaldi hidden in it. And Tom O'Horgan came to it and they offered me a role. And it took me two weeks to say no because I really---I wrote him a short note that said, \"look, I want to be a composer, I'm in classical music, this is not really who I am, but thank you.\" But for two weeks I was tormented because people were saying, \"do it, do it.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJeff Janeczko: That's such an opportunity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBruce Adolphe: Yeah. But it wouldn't have been me really.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://milken.aviaryplatform.com/collections/1159/collection_resources/97360/file/194163#t=8244.0,8306.33506"}]}]}]}