A Fiddler’s Tale

Igor Stravinsky’s L’histoire du soldat or A Soldier’s Story, a morality play for narrator, dancers and orchestra, is one of the most famous works by one of the 20th century’s greatest composers. Trumpeter, bandleader and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Wynton Marsalis pays homage to it with A Fiddler’s Tale, in which a talented jazz fiddler is seduced by the Devil, disguised as a record producer, into forsaking his art to play lucrative but meaningless commercial music. Unhappy over abandoning his true talents, the fiddler breaks the Devil’s hold and rediscovers music of genuine beauty.