All Aboard the Imagination Bus

WILT Imagined Adventures Suite

I. Running on Rooftops
II. AutoBonn
III. March of the West River

POUPEL Childhood Memories (Persian Suite)
WILLIAMS Welcome to Jurassic Park
SILVESTRI The Avengers (Main Theme)
WILLIAMS Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
POWELL “Test Drive” from How to Train Your Dragon
POUPEL Foroud, Overture for a Tragic Hero

"Dinosaurs. Wizards. Heroes. One very unpredictable bus — and your orchestra's driving. What could go wrong?"

NAVI powers on at exactly 8:15 and makes one thing clear: this bus is not sticking to the map today. Captain Maybe — driver, self-declared explorer, a man who has never once taken the shortest way anywhere — grins, cranks the wheel, and off they go. Rooftops blur past. A castle appears out of nowhere. Dinosaurs roar somewhere up ahead. Heroes assemble around the next bend, and every single stop is a total surprise — even to the bus. Captain Maybe and NAVI narrate it all live, bickering and cheering their way through each twist, while the orchestra plays every gasp, chase, and triumphant moment right alongside them. Built for a kindergarten and first-grade audience — who'll arrive the ordinary way, yellow, wheels on the ground, zero magic involved — All Aboard the Imagination Bus turns an everyday field trip into the wildest ride of the year. Because on this bus, the destination was never the point. The trip is the whole adventure — and your orchestra is driving.

Long before a child can read music, they already understand how a story works. They've heard it in books, on-screen, in games they invent themselves — cause and effect, tension and relief, the good guy showing up just in time. All Aboard the Imagination Bus takes that instinct and hands it to a full orchestra.

Every stop on Captain Maybe and NAVI's route is really a lesson in how music tells a story without a single word. Kevin Wilt's Imagined Adventures Suite opens the ride with the pure feeling of discovery — the orchestra picks up speed, changes direction, and dares the audience to imagine what's coming next before it arrives. Farhad Poupel's Childhood Memories (Persian Suite) slows things down and does something different: it shows how music can hold on to a feeling — nostalgia, warmth, home — long after words would have run out. Listeners don't need any background in Persian musical tradition to feel exactly what the piece is reaching for.

Then come the borrowed worlds: Jurassic Park, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, How to Train Your Dragon, The Avengers. These scores are some of the clearest examples anywhere of music doing a character's talking for them — a rising melody means courage is arriving, a hush means something enormous is about to happen, a fanfare means the hero just walked in. Kids already know these cues instinctively from watching the movies. Hearing them played live, by real musicians a few feet away, is where the instinct turns into understanding.

One stop on the route is quieter than the rest: a brief passage from Farhad Poupel's Foroud, Overture for a Tragic Hero, a piece deeply personal to the composer. It's a gentle reminder that every culture has its own heroes and its own way of telling their stories through music — no dialogue required, just the orchestra.

For many of the children on this bus, it's also their first time hearing a live orchestra at all. They'll notice, maybe for the first time, that every instrument has its own voice, that dozens of musicians can move together as one, and that a room full of sound can take you somewhere you've never been. That's the real destination of All Aboard the Imagination Bus — not a castle, not a dinosaur, not a hero, but the discovery that music has been telling stories long before any of them could talk, and it's been waiting for them to notice.

Farhad Poupel is an internationally acclaimed Iranian-born composer whose music has been performed by leading artists and orchestras throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Now based in the United Kingdom, Poupel is recognized for his richly expressive musical language, vivid orchestral colors, and compelling sense of narrative, drawing inspiration from literature, mythology, poetry, history, and cinema.

His works have been performed by organizations including the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C., the National Orchestra of Iran, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, and numerous youth and professional ensembles worldwide. Acclaimed musicians such as Peter Jablonski, Jeffrey Biegel, Margaret Fingerhut, Guy Johnston, and Kotaro Fukuma have championed his music, which has also been featured on BBC Radio 3 and international broadcasts.

A frequent collaborator with performers and orchestras across the globe, Poupel has received commissions for works ranging from solo piano pieces to large-scale orchestral and choral compositions. His recent creative focus has centered on stories from the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), the great Persian epic, bringing its timeless heroes and legends to contemporary audiences through music.

Born in Isfahan, Iran, Poupel began his musical studies on the santur and piano before pursuing composition under the mentorship of renowned Iranian composer Saeed Sharifian. His music combines influences from both Eastern and Western traditions, creating a distinctive voice that is intellectually engaging, emotionally resonant, and accessible to audiences of all backgrounds.

Poupel currently serves as Composer-in-Residence of the Mithra Orchestra in Tehran and continues to build an international reputation as one of the most exciting emerging voices in contemporary classical music.

Kevin Wilt is a classical music evangelist. He composes music to introduce new audiences to the joy, drama, and adventure of classical music through familiar colors and lush textures, while engaging seasoned audiences with an underlying craftsmanship and sophistication. Composer John Corigliano praised his expert orchestration and beautiful writing, while the Bloomington Herald wrote, “[his music] has a keen sense of mood and tonal balance.”

Kevin’s recent commissions include AutoBonn for Michael Francis and The Florida Orchestra, and March of the West River, premiered at the College Band Directors National Association Southern Division Conference.

He was a resident at the Millay Colony for the Arts, and winner of the Music Teachers National Association Commission in Florida. He won the Fresh Squeezed Opera Call for Scores with his chamber opera, Prix Fixe, and the Musical Chairs Chamber Ensemble Composer Search. He was awarded a grant by the Atlantic Coast Conference Band Directors Association to create Urban Impressions, a multi-movement work for large wind ensemble. He was a recent finalist for the Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra Call for Scores, a finalist for the ASCAP/CBDNA Frederick Fennel Prize, the Symphony Number One Call for Scores III, the Hartford Opera Theater Call for Scores, and the American Prize in orchestra, band, and chamber music categories.

Recent performances include those by the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra, the Sydney Contemporary Orchestra, the Boston New Music Initiative, Fifth House Ensemble, the h2 Quartet, Project Fusion, the Apollo Fund, SHUFFLE Concert, the Mexico City Woodwind Quintet, ensembles at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, Florida State University, the University of Kansas, the University of Oklahoma, Michigan State University, Kennesaw State University, as well as a reading by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Leonard Slatkin.

Kevin is equally at home composing for film and television, earning him a Michigan Emmy® Award Nomination for Best Musical Composition. Other film projects include The Inevitable, The Happy Couple, a string quartet for the short film Renegade, and The Wars of Other Men.

He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Composition and a Master in Music Composition from Michigan State University, where he studied with Ricardo Lorenz and Jere Hutcheson, and Bachelor of Music Composition and Theory from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

He is Associate Professor of Music, Composer-in-Residence, and Chair of the Florida Atlantic University Department of Music in Boca Raton.

His works are published by Whistling Vine Music and Murphy Music Press.