REDISCOVER the Many Voices of Bruce Adolphe

Bruce Adolphe is a man of many voices: an author who has written about the complexities of music perception, a presenter who has delighted Lincoln Center audiences (Inside Chamber Music) and baffled public radio listeners (Piano Puzzlers), and, finally, a composer of chamber and orchestral music, operas, song cycles, and choral works. Running throughout much of his music is a clear and consistent “Jewish” influence. Yet here, too, there are many voices, as evidenced by the three vocal works included on our 2004 CD titled Bruce Adolphe.

The album opens with one of the most unique works in the Milken Archive, Ladino Songs of Love and Suffering, a song cycle that re-presents six traditional Sephardi song texts with original music. Like many compositions, Ladino Songs was the solution to a unique problem: the composer was commissioned to write something for voice, guitar, and French horn, an unusual combination given that it pairs one of the quietest instruments with one of the loudest. But the resulting song cycle is beautiful, evocative, jarring at times—a composition Gramophone called “an appropriately bittersweet web of nostalgia.”

Set in various locations in the former Soviet Union and the United States, Adolphe’s opera Mikhoels the Wise traces the life of the actor and activist Solomon Mikhoels. Known internationally for his acting prowess, Mikhoels led the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee under Stalin’s reign, and travelled the world to garner support for the Soviet war effort. After the war, Mikhoels served as an advocate for returning Jewish Holocaust survivors and for Jewish culture more generally. But when Stalin began to perceive a thriving Jewish culture in the Soviet Union as threat to his nationalist project, Mikhoels was murdered. The excerpt recorded by the Milken Archive (Act I, Scene 4) takes place at a train station in Birobidzhan, capital of the Jewish Autonomous Region, where the actor is met by a Yiddish-speaking female Korean refugee.

The album closes with Adolphe’s powerful tribute to the victims of the Holocaust, Out of the Whirlwind. Scored for two voices and large wind ensemble, its six movements are based on Yiddish songs and texts by Mordechai Gebirtig, Emil Gorovetz, and others who suffered and, in some cases, died during the Holocaust. Shot through with dissonance and portent, the songs invoke a stark juxtaposition of melancholy and sadness with violence and fear. The haunting setting of “Ani ma’amin” (I Believe) that closes the suite echoes in the mind’s ear long after the music stops.

While Adolphe’s career has never been a parochially “Jewish” one, it has been characterized by an unwavering embrace of his Jewish experience. When asked about this, Adolphe responded: “I think that one of the most important things a creative person can do is know thyself...I mean, what else does a composer do but tell one’s own story?”

Related Content from the Milken Archive and Beyond

His Story Speaking about his music, passion, and inspiration, Bruce Adolphe tells all in our oral history videos.

His Music Listen to Bruce Adolphe's entire album recorded for the Milken Archive on our Spotify channel.

His Inspiration Inspired by Rabbi Joachim Prinz, learn about Bruce Adolphe's recent project, "I Will Not Remain Silent.".