Storytellers

About Storytellers...nspired by the colorful symphonic masterpiece Scheherazade by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the Cape Symphony will reimagine the empowering art of storytelling through the lens of female voices.

Scheherazade is a symphonic suite based on the tales from One Thousand and One Nights, also known as The Arabian Nights, a collection of stories that include the adventures of Aladdin and Sinbad the Sailor. This classic favorite is famous for big, bold sonic colors and sweeping melodies, and features the violin as the imaginative Scheherazade herself, a woman who, according to the legend, told these stories to postpone her execution.

The Cape Symphony has commissioned the Iranian composer Niloufar Shiri to create a new and updated "Scheherazade" story from a woman's point of view. She has composed a piece entitled "Within My Soul: Scheherazade Reimagined" that connects Scheherazade with the stories of contemporary women. Niloufar will perform on the Kamancheh, a traditional Iranian string instrument

For the first time, the Cape Symphony collaborates with the renowned public radio program The Moth. Since its launch in 1997, The Moth, produced in Woods Hole and New York City, has presented thousands of stories told in front of live audiences around the country. Many of us are familiar with The Moth through the Peabody Award-winning The Moth Radio Hour, which airs on over 500 stations nationwide including our own CAI, and The Moth Podcast.

Our Moth storyteller will be award-winning writer Wang Ping. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, Ping was born in Shanghai, China. She will share her Moth piece, "The Book War," about how she survived the oppression of the Chinese cultural revolution by starting a banned book club. Ping will be accompanied by the Cape Symphony performing an original score by Chinese-American composer Laura Fan.