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percussion concerto premieres

On October 11 on the Ether Festival at London’s Southbank Centre, international percussion super star, Colin Currie (with Keith Lockhart and the BBC Concert Orchestra) premieres Wolfe’s newest work for orchestra, riSE and fLY for percussion and orchestra, at the South Bank Centre’s Ether Festival in London.

Using street percussion (buckets and junk percussion) and Appalachian body percussion, Wolfe weaves the soloist into the quilted texture of the orchestra to create an introspective and breathtaking experience…

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Bang on a Can All-Stars Premiere Field Recordings

At 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…

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riSE and fLY :: Colin Currie at Southbank Centre

On September 17, Colin Currie reprises his performance of riSE and fLY at London’s Southbank Centre, this time with conductor Ricardo Castro and the Youth Orchestra of Bahia.

Inspired by New York City street beats and the rhythms of American work song, Julia Wolfe’s riSE and fLY is a dazzling work commissioned by the BBC Concert Orchestra for Colin Currie.

Borrowing the title from a chain gang work song, Wolfe’s intention is to “take Colin to a new place and to bring something earthy and visceral to the orchestra – to break with formality and get down and dirty.”

The result is a thrilling evocation of street drummers, accordionists, singers, Chinese stringed erhus and the folk tradition of body percussion that fully encapsulates the festival’s title, Metal, Wood and Skin…

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Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields released on CD

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…

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Anthracite Fields receives Grammy nomination

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…

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writing

Steve Reich & Beryl Korot

September 20, 2002
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”One stormy night this summer in New York, I trekked over to Steve Reich and Beryl Korot’s place to see and hear their new video opera, Three Tales. Exploring the human relationship to technology, Three Tales offers up the question of where our responsibility lies. A quote from the opera indicates just how dire our future could become: ”If I scan your brain, download that information, I’ll have a little you right
here in my personal computer.” (…)