Joan Tower

Joan Tower (born September 6, 1938 in New Rochelle, New York)http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=2&ComposerId_2872=1605 Biography on Schirmer] [http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6515709 Music Makes Me Come Alive - NPR] is a contemporary American composer, pianist and conductor. Lauded by the New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, "Sequoia" (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant redwood from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man", two string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely-performed "Petroushskates".

Biography

Born in New Rochelle, New York in 1938, Tower moved to the South American nation of Bolivia when she was nine years old, an experience which she credits for making rhythm an integral part of her work. For the next decade Tower's talent in music, particularly on the piano, grew rapidly due to her father's insistence that she benefit from consistent musical training. Tower's relationship with her minerologist father is visible in many aspects of her work, most specifically her "mineral works" (including "Black Topaz"(1976) and "Silver Ladders" (1986). She returned to the United States as a young woman to study music, first at Bennington College, in Vermont, and then at Columbia University where she studied under Otto Luening, Jack Beeson, and Vladimir Ussachevsky and was awarded her doctorate in composition in 1968.

In 1969 Tower, along with violinist Joel Lester and flautist Patricia Spencer, founded the New York based Da Capo Chamber Players where she served as the group's pianist. Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s Tower wrote a number of successful works for the Da Capo Players, including "Platinum Spirals"(1976), "Amazon I" (1977) and "Wings" (1981). Though the group won several awards in its early years, including the Naumburg Award in 1973, Tower left the group in 1984, buoyed by the immediate success of her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1971). In 1972 Tower accepted a faculty position at Bard College in composition, a post she continues to hold today. Tower received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1976.

In 1985, a year after leaving the Da Capo Players, Tower accepted a position at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, where she served as composer-in-residence until 1988. During this period Tower produced two of her most significant works, "Silver Ladders" and the first and second "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman".

Tower became the first woman recipient of the prestigious Grawemeyer Award (Music Composition), awarded by the University of Louisville, in 1990. In 1993, under commission from the Milwaukee Ballet, Tower composed "Stepping Stones", a selection from which she would go on to conduct at the White House. Other compositions from the 1990s include the third "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman", multiple piano concertos (notably 1996's "Rapids (Piano Concerto no. 2)" and "Tambor" (1998) written for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. In 1997 Tower accepted a position as composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke's and in 1998 she won the Delaware Symphony's prestigious Alfred I. DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composer. [http://www.wwnorton.com/college/music/enj9/shorter/composers/tower.htm Joan Tower ] ]

In 2002 Tower won the Annual Composer's Award from the Lancaster (Pennsylvania)Symphony. During the 2003-2004 season two new works were debuted, "DNA" a percussion quintet commissioned for Frank Epstein, and "Incandescent". In 2004 the Pittsburgh Symphony's recording of "Tambor", "Made in America", and "Concerto for Orchestra" earned a Grammy nomination. In 2004 Carnegie Hall's "Making Music" series featured a retrospective of Tower's body of work, performed by artists including the Tokyo String Quartet and pianists Melvin Chen and Ursula Oppens. In 2005 Tower became the first composer commissioned for the "Ford Made in America" program, the only project of its kind to involve smaller-budget orchestras as commissioning agents of new work by major composers, in which her 15 minute "Made in America" was performed in every state of the union during the 2005-2007 season. In 2008, Tower's "Made in America" and the recording of it by the Nashville Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin won three Grammy Awards: in the categories Best Orchestral Performance, Best Classical Album and Best Classical Contemporary Composition. [ [http://www.answers.com/topic/joan-tower?cat=entertainment Joan Tower: Biography and Much More from Answers.com ] ]

She is currently the Asher B. Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, [5] New York, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and serves on the Artistic Advisory panel of the BMI Foundation.

Work

Tower's early music seems to reflect the influences of her mentors at Columbia University and is rooted in the serialist tradition, whose sparse texture complimented her interest in chamber music. As she developed as a composer Tower began to gravitate towards the work of Olivier Messiaen and George Crumb and broke away from the strict serialist model. Her work became more colorful and has often been described as impressionistic. She often composes with specific ensembles or soloists in mind, and aims to exploit the strengths of these performers in her composition.

Among her most notable work is Tower's four part "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman", each dedicated to 'women who are adventurous and take risks'. Inspired by Aaron Copland's "Fanfare for the Common Man", the fanfares are scored for 3 trumpets, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba and percussion. The first fanfare was debuted in 1987 and conducted by Hans Vonk. For the second fanfare, which premiered in 1989, Tower added one percussion while the third, debuted in 1991 was scored for a double brass quintet, and the fourth was scored for a full orchestra. The fifth, and final, portion of "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman" was commissioned for the Aspen Music Festival in 1993 and was written specifically for Joan Harris.

List of Works

A list of works is available on the [http://www.schirmer.com/default.aspx?TabId=2419&State_2872=3&ComposerID_2872=1605&CategoryID_2872=0 Schirmer website] .

Interviews

* [http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4369 "Joan Tower: Made in America "] Joan Tower in conversation with Frank J. Oteri, NewMusicBox September 15, 2005
* [http://my.voyager.net/~duffie/tower.html "The composer in conversation with Bruce Duffie"] Bruce Duffie interview was first published in New Music Connoisseur Magazine, Spring, 2001, and revised in February, 2006.

Discography

* [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559328 "TOWER: Made in America / Tambor / Concerto for Orchestra"] Naxos - Catalogue No: 8.559328
* [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559215 "Chamber and Solo Music"] Naxos - Catalogue No:8.559215 Chamber Music, Instrumental
* [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=FECD-0025 "Silver Ladders / Island Prelude / Sequoia"] Naxos - Catalogue No:FECD-0025
* [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.559146 "Cantos Desiertos / BEASER / TOWER / LIEBERMANN" ] Naxos - Catalogue No:8.559146
* [http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=FECD-0032 "WORLD PREMIERE COLLECTION"] Naxos- Catalogue No: FECD-0032

External links

* [http://www.schirmer.com/composers/tower_bio.html G. Schirmer: Joan Tower Biography]
* [http://music.acu.edu/www/iawm/pages/earth/comp/tower.html Environmental Themes: Joan Tower]
* [http://my.voyager.net/~duffie/tower.html Joan Tower interview by Bruce Duffie]
* [http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4369 NewMusicBox cover: Joan Tower in conversation with Frank J. Oteri, September 15, 2005 (includes video)]

Listening

* [http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=24 Art of the States: Joan Tower] "Petroushskates" (1980)

References