"Likely the very first piece of music inspired by the Wall Street Journal!" 

Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl

On an intuitive hunch, filmmaker Aviva Kempner urged me to meet Daniel Pearl’s parents. During a wonderful impromptu evening together, the Pearls captivated me with stories of Danny’s humor and insight. I had already known that both of us had grown up in Encino and attended Birmingham High School. What I didn’t know was that Danny himself was an accomplished violinist and that his passion to play music helped him establish networks of friends wherever he went. How fascinating that Danny’s curiosity and brilliant journalism led him from humble Encino to the central nexus of world politics. The result of our meeting was “Stories From My Favorite Planet,” The piece intertwines readings from five articles published in At Home in the World, into a musical tapestry that portray Danny’s compassion as well as his sense of the ridiculous.

This adaptation for narrator, violin, and orchestra features two segments from the larger work. The first is a powerful Wall Street Journal story set in Kosovo where Danny tries to discover if any Serb and Albanian friendships still remain amidst the war. The piece that follows, “Tears in Kosovo,” is an expressive soliloquy with resonance of Eastern European folk harmonies.

Danny’s article on the rediscovery of a UCLA-owned Stradivarius violin became one of the Wall Street Journal’s most popular stories. The violin had fallen off the roof of a musician’s car 25 years earlier. When rediscovered by a luthier,  the new owner was loathe to return it because she says it’s the only violin that lets her play in tune! Musically, I couldn’t resist setting this movement as a tango, the “Missing Violin Tango.” In between the tango are ridiculous passages of scales “in honor” of the student who didn’t want to give up the Stradivarius!

Stories From My Favorite Planet” was commissioned by the Daniel Pearl Foundation for the second annual worldwide Daniel Pearl Music Day.