JULIA WOLFE, the Pulitzer prize winning American composer born 1958, MacArthur Genius grant recipient and a big mover and shaker in contemporary music circles, co-founder of new music collective Bang on a Can back in the 80s, famous for their marathon concerts lasting for days. Bang on a Can spawned a festival and record company and teaching arm all devoted to new music. She’s composition professor at NYU and one of the first to fold rock music, and funk and pop influences into her music, specializing in these big bold multi media collaborations and projects that are commissioned right around the world.
She won her Pulitzer for Anthracite Fields which has to be the first oratorio about coal mining, in Pennsylvania where she’s originally from. And she’s often political, gaining worldwide attention for such things as Her Story of 2020, commissioned for the centenary of women’s suffrage. It’s inspired by Abigail Adams' letters to her husband John with those famous words:
"Dear John, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and more favorable than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could"
MUSIC: Anthracite Fields IV. Flowers
Presented by composer Joan Tower for International Women’s Month in March, written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
