Chad serves as Assistant Conductor to SFS Music Director Designate Esa-Pekka Salonen in a beguiling mashup of music and the written word. Charles Perrault was one of the original proponents of children’s literature. A prominent French author and avid collector of folk tales, he assembled an unforgettable set of stories under the name Mother Goose in 1695. 200 years later, his enduring characters found their way into an enchanting orchestral suite by Ravel. By then, French poetry had ventured into the hallucinatory realm of Arthur Rimbaud and Stéphane Mallarmé. To navigate the Britten and Ravel settings of these surrealistic landscapes, Salonen welcomes the impressive soprano Julia Bullock. The evening begins with a work written after a suggestion by Salonen to Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Steven Stucky: the haunting, freely conceived Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary.