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Society of Voice Arts & Sciences

2022 VOICE ARTS LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT HONOREE

December 18, 2022


An adaptation of Pulitzer Prize winner Eudora Welty’s only children’s book, "The Shoe Bird," set to music by composer Samuel Jones that received a 2008 Grammy Award nomination for "Best Musical Album for Children.”

Live Performance:
Tuesday, October 26, 2021 at Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, West Palm Beach

Recent Broadcasts:

  • Thursday, December 22, 2022 at 8:00pm EST on WXEL

  • Friday, December 23, 2022 at 9:00pm EST on WPBT

  • Sunday, December 25, 2022 at 10:00am EST on WPBT

  • Upcoming Broadcasts: Airing on PBS stations nationwide in 2023!

Eudora's Fable: The Shoe Bird is a musical fable written for children's choir, narration, and orchestra. The work is based on the only children's book ever written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Eudora Welty, The Shoe Bird. First published in 1964, the story is considered a fanciful fable, like Aesop, about animals, containing a moral or lesson. While describing the many birds of the story, the music introduces and expands the audience's knowledge of the orchestra instruments by featuring the auxiliary instruments of the woodwind section. Composer Samuel Jones adapted the story to create the music and lyrics ofEudora's Fable: The Shoe Bird.

For our television broadcast, Palm Beach Symphony was joined by a 30-voice chorus with members from Young Singers of the Palm Beaches. The ensemble was be led by the Symphony's Music Director Gerard Schwarz and narrated by voice actor and director Charlie Adler, known for his multiple roles as Cow, Chicken, and The Red Guy in the Emmy nominated series Cow and Chicken as well as Buster Bunny on Tiny Toon Adventures, Ed and Bev Bighead on Rocko's Modern Life, and Ickis on Aahh!!! Real Monsters. Commissioned specifically for this production by painter and sculpture artist Ed McGowin, enjoy bigger than life-sized artwork projected behind the orchestra as the story unfolds.