Sometimes, all you need is a little push. In the fall of 1976, when Julia Wolfe arrived at the University of Michigan from Pennsylvania, she was just 17 and viewed herself as a “wild teenager” with her sights on social sciences and politics. Activism was a possible path. Music wasn’t on her radar.
But one day, a friend coaxed Wolfe into taking a peculiar music class, taught by a forward-thinking Quaker who didn’t care how much you knew about composing…
continue readingTom Huizenga (NPR)
September 15, 2022
Sometimes, all you need is a little push. In the fall of 1976, when Julia Wolfe arrived at the University of Michigan from Pennsylvania, she was just 17 and viewed herself as a “wild teenager” with her sights on social sciences and politics. Activism was a possible path…
continue readingAt the Barbican Centre in London, on March 20, 2012, the Bang on a Can All-Stars premiere Field Recordings — with new works by Gordon, Lang and Wolfe. The evening-length project that is as much a mystery as a concert – a kind of ghost story. The ghosts aren’t the physical presence of people gone before, but they are the ghosts of sounds, images, ideas, and voices. Each composer has been asked to find and interact with something recorded before, using the power of music made right in front of us to reach out to other things not present…
continue readingcl, pno, perc, egtr, vc, db
Road Trip was commissioned by BAM for the 2017 Next Wave Festival and by Stephen A. Block, Robert Braun & Joan Friedman, Leslie Lassiter, Raulee Marcus, New Music USA, Maria & Robert A. Skirnick, Jane and Richard Stewart, with additional support from Jerry Eberhardt and Phil Hettema.
By Allan Kozinn
Like most composers, Julia Wolfe is often in two places at once psychically: working on new pieces (with working defined as anything from cogitating and experimenting to actually putting the notes on paper) but also seeing that the backlist is getting attention. In recent weeks she has been putting the finishing touches on “Iron Maiden,” a new solo work for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and working on “Combat de Boxe,” for the Asko Ensemble of the Netherlands…
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