Tom 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 readingThis season Julia Wolfe’s large works for string orchestra, Fuel and Cruel Sister, are performed at Carnegie Hall by two of the country’s leading interpretors of contemporary works.
On October 25, Robert Spano leads the American Composers Orchestra in their Carnegie performance of Julia Wolfe’s full-throttled work for strings, Fuel, on a concert dubbed “Orchestra Underground: Adding Fuel to the Fire”…
continue readingFrom November 5-11, two European festivals feature music by Julia Wolfe:
• 11/5: Sounds of Music Festival (Groningen, NL) — the JACK Quartet performs Early that summer
• 11/7: Strings of Autumn Fesitval (Prague, CZ) — Bang on a Can All-Stars perform Anthracite Fields with Martinů Voices
• 11/8: Sounds of Music Festival — Trash Panda Collective presents Dark Full Ride
• 11/9: Sounds of Music Festival — Impatience, Lick, and Girlfriend performed by Ensemble Klang and the Prins Claus Conservatorium; Earring performed by Saskia Lankhoorn; Lick and Girlfriend performed by Ensemble Klang; Reeling performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars
• 11/10: Sounds of Music Festival — Anthracite Fields performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars with Cappella Amsterdam
• 11/11: Sounds of Music Festival — Impatience, On Seven-Star-Shoes and Believing performed by the Prins Claus Conservatorium
On January 20, Julia Wolfe joins the U-M Contemporary Directions Ensemble, directed by Oriol Sans, for an evening of conversation and performances of her small ensemble works.
This concert is part of a week-long residency by Ms. Wolfe (a U-M alum) to develop Fire in my Mouth, an evening-length orchestral work co-commissioned by UMS with the New York Philharmonic, Cal Performances and the Krannert Center.
This event is free and open to the public; no tickets required…
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read New York Times review from the premiere
listen to NPR interview with Wolfe about Her Story
Julia Wolfe’s Her Story, a 40-minute, theatrical work for orchestra and women’s chamber choir, received its world premiere September 15-17 with the Nashville Symphony and conductor Giancarlo Guerrero. The world premiere is followed by performances in 2023 from co-commissioners Chicago Symphony Orchestra (January 6–7), Boston Symphony Orchestra (March 16–18), and San Francisco Symphony (May 25–27); National Symphony Orchestra concerts will be announced at a later date…
continue readingHer Story
Boston Symphony Orchestra
with Lorelei
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
March 16-18
followed by performances with:
San Francisco Symphony and National Symphony
[Her Story] has a ferocity that is literally written into the score, but also an absence of resolution as it looks back to suffrage with one wary eye toward the future steps this country still needs to take for something resembling true equality…
continue reading![[IMAGE] Julia Wolfe's Her Story © 2022, Kurt Heinecke](https://mcusercontent.com/67441ca74ccaac699656b26c5/images/1a361a7c-46c7-e9e2-369f-91233ca7e488.jpg)
Her Story
Marin Alsop and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra with Lorelei
January 6-7, 2023
followed by performances with:
Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony,
and National Symphony
By David Ng
When you win a Pulitzer Prize for music, you hear about it just like everyone else — in the news perhaps, or from other people who read about it before you do.
You don’t know anything, said composer Julia Wolfe, who won the coveted award last year for her choral piece Anthracite Fields, an unconventional exploration into the history of coal mining in rural Pennsylvania.
Wolfe recalled that she was at home in her Tribeca loft, working with colleagues from the Bang on a Can ensemble, when a call came in from Washington, DC…
continue readingThe music of Beethoven and Bach gets a lot of attention in the Berkshires every summer. But amid the more august offerings, there is a musical collective that wants to rip the powdered wig off traditional classical music. Playing the work of living composers, and using unconventional methods, they are interested in anything but a musical history lesson.
Leading a string ensemble of about twenty musicians an hour before their public recital, conductor Brad Lubman gives his players an unusual criticism—they sound too polished, clean, locked in with each other…
continue readingRead the New York Times Preview
Miller Theater at Columbia University presents a portrait concert of the music of Julia Wolfe on February 3.
New York’s Signal Ensemble, conducted by Brad Lubman, gives the NY premieres of Wolfe’s two string orchestra works, Fuel and Cruel Sister.
New CD: Cruel Sister“Though Ms. Wolfe never directly quotes this mournful song, she painstakingly depicts the story…
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