Listen to the Storyteller: A Trio of Musical Tales from Around the World

1	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch / Wynton Marsalis 2:37
2	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch 2:32
3	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch 1:14
4	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch 2:05
5	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch 3:27
6	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch 5:44
7	The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch 1:45
8	The Lesson of the Land / Graham Greene 19:59
9	The Face in the Lake / Kate Winslet 20:15

Barnes & Noble

It's no surprise that Listen to the Storyteller won the 2000 Grammy Award for best children's spoken-word album. It's a tasteful collaboration between distinguished actors -- Kate Winslet (Titanic) and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves) -- and prominent composers, revolving around a trio of folk/fairy tales whose collective structure is inspired by Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Musical passages are interspersed throughout the actors' interpretations to help illustrate and enhance the storytelling. First up is "The Fiddler and the Dancin' Witch," by the extravagantly gifted Wynton Marsalis, who wrote the story, composed the score, and narrated the whole thing, too. Then comes "The Lesson of the Land," told by Native American Greene, and scored by Edgar Meyer, who also plays bass. Finally, there's Winslet's "The Face in the Lake," with music by Patrick Doyle (Sense and Sensibility, The Little Princess.) The stories themselves aren't staggeringly original: "Fiddler," about a boy who gets the best of a threatening witch via his prodigious musical talent, contains echoes of classic beat-the-devil scenarios; "Face" melds elements of "Sleeping Beauty," "Beauty and the Beast," and "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"; "Lesson" is a garden-variety vision-quest tale. The music, though, is first-rate -- in particular, Marsalis's wonderfully evocative score, with its wild, soaring violin work by Joshua Bell. The narrations, too, are engaging, and they encourage kids to listen closely to what the orchestra's doing. Bonus for content-concerned moms and dads: A few life lessons are neatly tucked away amid the rampant artmaking in Listen to the Storyteller -- you'll appreciate how the central message of "Fiddler," when all's said and done, is "Listen to your parents." Moira McCormick

All Music Guide

Listen To The Story Teller unites the talents famous narrators, musicians and composers for three new children's stories. Kate Winslet, Wynton Marsalis and Graham Green narrate as violinist Joshua Bell, bassist Edgar Meyer, dobro player Jerry Douglas and the Orchestra of St. Luke's perform original music written for this project. Listen To The Story Teller also features the complete texts of the stories, as well as illustrations in the CD booklet's liner notes. Heather Phares