Duo Harmonia & Heart-Tales

Where Music, Storytelling, and Cultures Meet

Duo Harmonia, the piano ensemble of Turkish-American pianist Pınar Başgöze and Portuguese-American pianist Susana Pinto, presents Heart-Tales—a multicultural, interdisciplinary project that brings together music and storytelling through the artistic collaboration of Turkish-American actor, director, producer, and filmmaker Ayçıl Yeltan.

Funded by a Minnesota State Arts Board FY 2020 Literary and Performing Arts Artist Initiative Grant, Heart-Tales grew from Duo Harmonia’s commitment to building bridges between cultures through music. The project brings together international composers and artists in three newly commissioned works for piano four-hands and narrator, inspired by stories rooted in Turkish, Portuguese, and Thai-Minnesotan cultural traditions.

With Ayçıl Yeltan as narrator, the spoken word and music become equal partners in bringing these stories to life.

At the heart of Heart-Tales is a simple idea: every culture has stories to tell.

Although the traditions represented in these three works come from different parts of the world, their stories speak to shared human experiences—love, resilience, courage, justice, freedom, acceptance, and belonging. Together, they reveal how traditions that may at first seem very different can resonate with and beautifully complement one another.

Through Heart-Tales, Duo Harmonia also hopes to introduce younger generations to the timeless art of storytelling and to the ways stories can preserve memory, identity, imagination, and cultural heritage.

A Cloud in Love (Sevdalı Bulut)

Story by Nâzım Hikmet
Music by Turgay Erdener
English translation by Pınar Başgöze

For the Turkish story, Pınar Başgöze selected A Cloud in Love (Sevdalı Bulut), the beloved tale by renowned Turkish poet and writer Nâzım Hikmet.

Başgöze translated the story into English and commissioned distinguished, award-winning Turkish contemporary composer Turgay Erdener to create an original work for piano four-hands and narrator.

Poetic, imaginative, and deeply human, A Cloud in Love is a story of strength, resilience, honesty, and the transformative power of love. At its heart is the strength of a woman who stands against cruelty and oppression, and a world in which courage and love ultimately triumph over those who seek to dominate and destroy.

Through Erdener’s music, Hikmet’s magical story takes on a new dimension, creating a vivid dialogue between the spoken word and the piano.

The Bronze Boy

Story by Sophia de Mello Breyner
Music by Mário Franco

English Translation by Susana Franco Pinto

Written in 1956 by celebrated Portuguese poet and author Sophia de Mello Breyner, The Bronze Boy invites us into an enchanting world in which a garden comes alive.

The story reflects Breyner’s profound connection with nature and her enduring engagement with ideas of justice and freedom. Through the experience of a young girl who longs to believe in a fantastical world despite the skepticism of her friends, The Bronze Boy celebrates imagination, wonder, and the courage to see beyond what others accept as possible.

The music for this magical tale was composed by renowned Portuguese dancer, jazz double bassist, and composer Mário Franco, whose musical voice brings the living garden and its extraordinary world vividly to life.

The Fish Tale

Story by Puangpen Prescott
Music by Mary Prescott

The third work, The Fish Tale, is written by Thai-Minnesotan storyteller Puangpen Prescott.

Warm, magical, and deeply moving, the story explores persistence, resilience, acceptance, trust, and the possibility of a second chance. It tells of entering an unfamiliar world and discovering the courage to begin again—surrounded by unconditional love, respect, and trust.

The music was composed by distinguished, award-winning Thai-American contemporary composer and interdisciplinary artist Mary Prescott, whose work gives this touching story an evocative musical voice.

Three Stories. Three Musical Voices. One Shared Human Experience.

From Turkey to Portugal to Minnesota, Heart-Tales brings three cultural traditions together through storytelling and newly created music.

Each story has its own history, imagery, and musical language. Yet together they remind us that across cultures and across generations, people have always told stories to make sense of the world, preserve what matters, and connect with one another.

For Duo Harmonia, Heart-Tales reflects a central part of its artistic mission: to create connections among cultures through music and to celebrate both the differences that make cultural traditions distinctive and the shared human experiences that bring us together.