Bono and Gavin Friday works on illustrations for the new Peter and the Wolf book

NEW YORK (U2 Fans Website) - Since its debut in 1936, stars from Shakespearean actor John Gielgud to horror master Boris Karloff to rock legend David Bowie have narrated Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf. Add Irish musician and performance artist Gavin Friday and his famous lifelong friend, U2 lead singer Bono, to the list.
But they have not produced a rock 'n' roll version of the story of young Peter's encounter with the ravenous wolf.

Friday and musical partner Maurice Seezer have recorded a dark, acoustic version of Prokofiev's work that replaces orchestral instruments with a banjo, guitar, piano and other folk instruments. Friday is the narrator.

Bono, with two of his children, painted illustrations for a book that accompanies the Friday-Seezer Ensemble compact disc. The paintings were inspired in part by the death in 2001 of Bono's father. Bono says his dad "was a beautiful tenor and loved music."

Bono told U2's Fan website that "Peter and the Wolf is about teaching kids music. So I put him in (the paintings) as the grandfather in the story � living in the forest. And I put myself (in). I made it about family."

The CD-book package (Amazon, $16.07) is scheduled to appear in U.S. book and record stores in early November. Bono's original paintings will be on display and then auctioned Nov. 21 at Christie's in New York. The CD-book also is available at www.peterwolf.org. The auction catalog and the chance to place bids for the auction also are on the Web site.

Profits from sales of the CD-book package and the paintings will go to the Dublin-based Irish Hospice Foundation, which plans to use the proceeds to train hospice caregivers in AIDS-ravaged Africa, the USA and elsewhere around the world.