On Sunday, March 16, The Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra brought the beloved stories of Frederick’s Fables to life in conjunction with the Milwaukee Public Library. Combining the music of composer Michael Abels, the words and artwork of children’s author and illustrator Leo Lionni, and the dramatic contributions of Milwaukee’s own First Stage using multiple art forms, audience members young and old delighted in these timeless tales.
Humans have been telling stories since the beginning of time. Stories connect us. They teach lessons and entertain us. They pass on history and legends. They may inspire or scare us. Stories can make us laugh, cry, or think about something in a new way.
We usually think about stories as being made up of words, but there are other ways to tell stories, too. Stories can be told through visual art, music, dance, and drama, or a combination of these art forms. Combining words and the arts makes the storytelling even more powerful!
Michael Abels was commissioned to write Frederick’s Fables by the Minnesota-based group VocalEssence. The first two movements, “Frederick” and “The Greentail Mouse”, premiered in 1994 and featured James Earl Jones as the narrator. “Theodore and the Talking Mushroom” and “Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse” premiered in 1996 with narrator Garrison Keillor. The complete musical composition features four tales from Lionni’s collection in total, which includes 16 different stories.
Leo Lionni was born in Amsterdam in 1910. His family loved and appreciated art, and he knew he wanted to be an artist from a very young age. These childhood experiences, along with exposure to different styles of art both at home and in museum settings, would inspire his books and illustrations later in life.
He became a children’s author and illustrator almost by accident when he created a story about a blue dot and a yellow dot for his grandchildren, Little Blue and Little Yellow. Soon Leo was writing many more books.
Rather than drawing or painting, Leo created his illustrations with the collage technique – the art of cutting and glueing bits of different materials like paper or ribbon to create images. Many of his stories can be classified as fables, which convey a moral or lesson.
