Bruce Adolphe

Every week since 2002, composer-pianist Bruce Adolphe plays one of his Piano Puzzlers on American Public Media’s Performance Today, hosted by Fred Child. The most popular feature of Performance Today, piano puzzlers are familiar tunes disguised in the styles of famous classical composers, such as Eleanor Rigby in the style of Brahms, I Could Have Danced All Night in the style of Bartok, Blackbird in the style of Messiaen, and Amazing Grace in the style of Schumann.  A call-in show with contestants trying to name both the style and the tune, Piano Puzzlers has over one million listeners weekly. Adolphe performs his piano puzzlers in concert throughout the world, from the Savannah Music Festival to the Salzburg Global Seminar in the Schloss Leopoldskron. Bruce Adolphe’s music is performed worldwide by renowned musicians including Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Daniel Hope, Angel Blue, Fabio Luisi, the Brentano String Quartet and over 60 symphony orchestras. Adolphe has written several books on the musical imagination and creativity, including The Mind’s Ear: Exercises for Improving the Musical Imagination (Oxford, third edition 2021) and Visions and Decisions: Imagination and Technique in Music Composition (Cambridge, 2022). His compositions for solo piano include Chopin Dreams, Seven Thoughts Considered as Music, My Inner Brahms, and What I Tell My Piano (2023). Bruce Adolphe’s many works featuring the piano include Dreaming and Thinking (piano and string quintet), Memories of a Possible Future (piano and string quartet), The Tiger’s Ear (piano, flute, oboe, violin, viola, cello) and a piano concerto. Since 1992, he has been resident lecturer and director of family concerts for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where his lecture series Inside Chamber Music, illustrated by Adolphe at the piano and by chamber ensembles, is popular via the Internet with audiences throughout the world.

Bruce Adolphe is a Steinway Artist.