Troy Music Hall presents Berus in the Woods! Featuring Quintocracy & Electric City Puppets

Program Description

Berus in the Woods is a narrative piece for wind quintet. The conceptual drive for the piece gives children and new listeners the opportunity to hear instruments in isolation along with thematic materials that help listeners of all
ability levels to identify and distinguish the different sounds of the instruments involved. Non-musicians may find the different instruments difficult to identify without guided listening. Britten’s ‘Guide to the Orchestra’ and Prokofiev’s ‘Peter and the Wolf’ work toward the same goal, but take different routes than its constituent parts. ‘Peter and the Wolf’ moves a step further in placing the skill in a narrative which makes the different timbres more accessible for children. ‘Peter and the Wolf’ uses the whole orchestra to reinforce the individual themes, the listener does not have the opportunity to get a good concept of each individual instrument, rather an understanding of each section. In ‘Berus in the Woods’, each instrument represents a single character in the story and the piece is constructed, through a narrative, with their interactions intertwining after the initial solo introductions to their themes and sounds.