By MICHAEL COOPER APRIL 4, 2017

LEWISBURG, Pa. — Onstage, a choir intoned the names of coal miners whose deaths and injuries had landed them on the Pennsylvania Mining Accident index more than a century ago. In the lobby, members of the audience — some of whom came on free shuttle buses that picked them up from nearby coal towns — created an index of their own, writing about their mining ancestors in a small leather notebook held open with a coal paperweight…

Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer-Prize winning oratorio for chorus and instruments, Anthracite Fields, will be released on Cantaloupe Music on September 25, 2015. Wolfe wrote the piece after doing extensive research about the coal-mining industry in an area very near where she grew up in Pennsylvania. Her text draws on oral histories, interviews with miners and their families, speeches, geographic descriptions, children’s rhymes, and coal advertisements…

Read LA Times review of
West Coast premiere at Disney Hall
The Los Angeles Master Chorale and
the Bang on a Can All-Stars

April 16, 2016
The Royal Library of Denmark, Copenhagen

click here to stream the music
click here for the full album

“[Anthracite Fields] captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost…but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost…

Julia Wolfe Wins 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music for Anthracite Fields
an oratorio for chorus and instruments

“[Anthracite Fields] captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost…but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work.” — Mark Swed, LA Times

Read NPR interview with Wolfe here…

Julia Wolfe’s, Anthracite Fields, her Pulitzer prize-winning oratorio for chorus and amplified ensemble, has received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Click here to listen to an NPR feature on Anthracite Fields.

Wolfe wrote the work after doing extensive research about the coal-mining industry in an area very near where she grew up in Pennsylvania. Her text draws on oral histories, interviews with miners and their families, speeches, geographic descriptions, children’s rhymes, and coal advertisements…

On May 30 and 31, the NY PHIL Biennial presents the New York premiere of Julia Wolfe’s newest work, Anthracite Fields, with the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street (Julian Wachner, conductor). In the new work, Wolfe draws from oral histories, interviews, speeches, geographic descriptions, local rhymes, and coal advertisements to create a unique oratorio that provides an intimate look at an important slice of American life…