Children’s Stories features world-premiere recordings of works based on beloved children’s literature by superstar classical composers Michael Abels (Frederick’s Fables for narrator and orchestra) and Augusta Read Thomas (Gwendolyn Brooks Settings for children’s choir and orchestra). Both pieces bring children’s literary narratives stunningly to life through music.

Making its commercial recording debut, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of its music director Stilian Kirov, is joined by acclaimed bass-baritone Michael Sumuel, narrating Frederick’s Fables, and youth choirs Anima – Glen Ellyn Children’s Chorus and ChiArts Choir in Gwendolyn Brooks Settings.

Michael Abels co-wrote the Pulitzer prize-winning opera Omar with Rhiannon Giddens and is celebrated for his scores for Jordan Peele’s films, including the Oscar-winning Get Out. Abels has garnered Grammy and Emmy nominations and was short-listed for an Oscar for his score for Us, which TheWrap named “Score of the Decade”. Most recently, Abels wrote the music for Disney’s new Star Wars series, The Acolyte.

Praised by The New Yorker as “a true virtuoso composer”, Augusta Read Thomas was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s longest-serving Composer-in-Residence (1997–2006) and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Championed by Barenboim, Rostropovich, and Boulez, The American Academy of Arts and Letters described Thomas as “one of the most recognizable and widely loved figures in American Music.”

Abels’s Frederick’s Fables are based on the children’s stories by Caldecott Award-winning children’s author and illustrator Leo Leonni. Abels transforms these beloved fables into “an unseen animated film”, weaving narration and orchestra to vividly conjure images in the audience’s imagination – truly a modern-day “Peter and the Wolf”.

Thomas’s Gwendolyn Brooks Settings interprets poetry from the 1985–1986 U.S. Poet Laureate and 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winner’s Bronzeville Girls and Boys, based on a vibrant Chicago neighbourhood, historically called the city’s “Black Metropolis”. Thomas’s score integrates orchestra and choir to “paint sonic images”, highlighting the meanings of Brooks’s poetic words.

This recording exemplifies collaboration across Chicago's musical scene, combining the talents of renowned composers, a Chicago-area orchestra, and community choirs to celebrate stories that speak to the universal experience of growth, community, and the power of storytelling.

Children’s Stories was produced and engineered by the Grammy-winning team of James Ginsburg and Bill Maylone. The album was recorded on 12 March 2022, for Frederick's Fables and 17 March 2024, for Gwendolyn Brooks Settings at Ozinga Chapel, Trinity Christian College, Palos Heights, IL. Additional recording for Michael Sumuel’s narration took place on 12 and 15 April 2024, at Hyde Street Studios in San Francisco, CA.