Celebrating Tower at 75

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With guitarist Sharon Isbin, for whom she wrote two works, Clocks (1985) for solo guitar and Snow Dreams (1983) for flute and guitar (also written for Carol Wincenc).

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Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman

As a result of the Houston Symphony’s Fanfare Project to celebrate Texas’ sesquicentennial in 1986, Tower wrote her fanfare as a tribute to Aaron Copland, taking inspiration from his “Fanfare for the Common Man.” She decided to turn the title around and called it, Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, dedicating it to specific “women who take risks and who are adventurous,” thus creating the female composer’s answer to Copland’s fanfare. The work was such a success that four more fanfares of the same name followed (the fourth one was written for full orchestra). The collection of fanfares have since then been performed by over 500 ensembles.

 Here’s what Scott Cantrell of The Kansas City Star wrote of the October 16, 1992 premiere of the fourth fanfare by the Kansas City Symphony:

“brilliant orchestral showpiece”

“Great slabs of dissonant brass chords crunch up against each other, and then chattering figurations run their way through the whole orchestra until a sonorous apotheosis is reached.”

“proving that a composer needn’t be dead, European and male to be heard in a symphony hall.”

The video is a choreographed version (by Rubén Graciani) of the first fanfare.

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Joan Tower blows out candles at her 75th Birthday post-concert reception at Bard College.

Photo: Karl Rabe, courtesy Bard.

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Photo: Stephanie Berger

At the Transient Glory Symposium hosted by the Young People's Chorus of New York City, 2012

(l-r) David Del Tredici, YPC Artistic Director/Founder Francisco J. Nunez, Joan Tower, and Bright Sheng

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I’m very much a composer citizen. I like to be visible; let people know we’re alive.

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Nashville Symphony Reaches Kickstarter Goal to Record 3 Joan Tower Works!

The Nashville Symphony has successfully raised more than $15,500 on Kickstarter to record Joan Tower's CHAMBER DANCE, STROKE, and VIOLIN CONCERTO live in concert this fall!  The recording will be released on Naxos and is being made in honor of Joan's 75th birthday...a lovely birthday present indeed!

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Leonard Slatkin and Joan Tower backstage after the "Hard Hat" concert performance of Made in America by the Nashville Symphony in June 2006.

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"Players are like the midwives." This is the Composer Portrait Preview with Joan Tower for Miller Theatre's 2010-11 season.

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Joan Tower on Vocal Music

Joan Tower has not written for voice. Here is what she has to say on writing vocal music:

“There’s an overlaying of meaning, there’s the musical meaning and then there’s the verbal meaning. And to the two things for me are like oil and water. I don’t know how you get them into the same space at the same time and have them both come out equally.”

- La Jolla Music Society: SummerFest (Arts and Music), January 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZPBt-dsVm0)

“Words are just a symbol of the sound, not the reason for the existence of a piece.”

- St. Louis Magazine, January 1987

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The recording of Made in America, performed by the Nashville Symphony with Leonard Slatkin conducting, won three awards at the 50th annual Grammy Awards: Best Classical Album, Best Classical Contemporary Composition, and Best Orchestral Performance     Here she is, happily with her Grammy Award.

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Strong music puts you in a space where you forget about yourself. It's like a good movie. It's an escape. You lose yourself. It's a license to feel, sing, shout and to dance.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6515709

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The Da Capo Chamber Players has been an influential and important part of Joan’s life. After graduating from Bennington College in 1961, she secured a teaching position at the Greenwich House Music School in New York where she formed a concert series that later turned into the Da Capo Chamber Players. The realization of the group (originally called the Empire Chamber Players) came about in 1969, with Allen Blustine on clarinet, Helen Harbison on cello, Patricia Spencer on flute, and Joel Lester on violin. Joan was the pianist of the group and wrote several successful works for them, including Petroushkates, Platinum Spirals, Amazon, and Wings; additionally she also handled many administrative tasks. After the big hit of her first orchestral piece, Sequoia, Joan left the group in 1984 to focus more on composing. Da Capo, having won the Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 1973, remains a vital part of the new music scene in New York and beyond.

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Joan blowing out candles after the Bard College birthday celebration concert on September 7, 2013.

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Departure from Serialism

During most of her years studying at Columbia University (1960s-1970s), Joan’s music was serial, following in the footsteps of contemporaries and mentors such as Mario Davidovsky, Charles Wourinen, Milton Babbitt, etc. During the mid-1970s, she began to turn away from this system of composition, favoring a more “organic” route. Here’s what she had to say about it in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from October 2010:

 "I was originally in the serial movement in the '60s…I fell into this group by accident. I liked the people but I didn't understand the music I was playing…It was very cerebral and didn't communicate."

 Her first break from serialism was heard in Breakfast Rhythms I & II (1974) for pierrot ensemble.

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And today, September 6, 2013, is Joan's 75th birthday. From all of us at G. Schirmer, happy birthday!

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Here is Contemporary Enclave performing Tower's Petroushskates at the Thailand International Composition Festival, conducted by James Ogburn, in 2012.

Written in 1980 and commissioned by the Da Capo Chamber Players and the New York State Council on the Arts to celebrate the group’s tenth anniversary, it combines two ideas: the opening "Shrovetide Fair" scene from Stravinsky’s "Petroushka" and the flowing motion of ice skating.

Here's what Gregory Sandow of the Village Voice wrote of the March 23, 1980 premiere at Alice Tully Hall: “something rare in new music: a happy romp, vigorous, uninhibited, and rhythmic, though not without whimsical and lyrical moments; and it’s tonal, in a dissonant, 1930s way.”

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Joan began teaching at Bard College in 1972, first only one day a week then becoming the Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts in 1988. She still teaches at the college, where she also runs the "Music Alive" series, focusing on 20th and 21st century repertoire. Here's some advice from Joan to student composers: “They always ask: What competition should I apply to? Will you write a recommendation? How do I get to this group? All this career stuff, and I’m like, wait a minute. Who’s in your backyard? Who are the players in your town? Who are the players in your school? Go to their concerts, get to know them, get interested in what they’re doing and maybe you’ll hook up something musical with them.” (NewMusicBox Interview, 2005)