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Cincinnati Symphony’s May Festival May 17-25

Julia Wolfe named Inaugural Festival Director of
Cincinnati Symphony’s

2024 May Festival
May 17-25

Concerts include the world premiere of Wolfe’s new choral fanfare All that breathes, her recent works with orchestra, Her Story and Pretty, as well as her Pulitzer Prize-winning work for chorus and ensemble, Anthracite Fields; plus Michael Gordon’s Natural History and David Lang’s the national anthems; with special guests the Bang on a Can All-Stars, Lorelei Ensemble, and Steiger Butte Singers joining the Cincinnati Symphony and May Festival Chorus…

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Chicago Symphony premieres ‘Her Story’

[IMAGE] Julia Wolfe's Her Story © 2022, Kurt Heinecke
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

[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
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Nashville Symphony performs ‘Flower Power’

[IMAGE] Julia Wolfe's Flower Power

January 24-26, conductor Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony perform Julia Wolfe’s Flower Power, featuring the Bang on a Can All-Stars.

A concerto for the All-Stars and orchestra, with video art by Jeff Sugg, Flower Power was co-commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Danish Radio Orchestra.

From Julia Wolfe:

Flower Power is about optimism, idealism, psychedelia, breaking with convention, and a little bit of love and peace…

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Portrait Concert at National Sawdust: Bang on a Can All-Stars

On December 12 at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust, the electrifying Bang on a Can All-Stars play an intimate concert of music by Bang on a Can co-founder Julia Wolfe – a set of new, recent, and ‘classic’ works featuring Wolfe’s signature combination of driving rock energy and minimalist serenity. Join us for an end-of-year hang as Bang on a Can performs Wolfe’s Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, Reeling, Lick and a “sneak peek” of her work Flower Power, for the Bang on a Can All-Stars and orchestra…

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Washington Post: At the Kennedy Center, the NSO offers a bracing history lesson

[IMAGE] Washington Post
At the Kennedy Center, the NSO offers a bracing history lesson

The Lorelei Ensemble joined the National Symphony Orchestra for the D.C. premiere of Julia Wolfe’s engrossing oratorio “Her Story.”

[IMAGE] Lorelei with National Symphony

The Lorelei Ensemble joined the NSO for Thursday night’s performance of Julia Wolfe’s “Her Story,” conducted by Marin Alsop. (Scott Suchman)

February 28, 2025
Review by Michael Andor Brodeur

On Thursday night at the Kennedy Center, the National Symphony Orchestra gave the DC…

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Biography

Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.

Wolfe’s recent premieres include Pretty, premiered in June 2023 by conductor Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic. Co-commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the St…

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Wolfe named 2021-2022 Carnegie Hall’s Debs Composer’s Chair

Julia Wolfe named Carnegie Hall’s
2021-2022 Debs Composer’s Chair

Julia Wolfe has been announced as the Richard and Barbara Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2021–2022 season. Wolfe creates music that has been described as emotionally charged, viscerally powerful, and socially conscious. As a composer, she responds to the world around her, bringing unsung histories to life in riveting musical tableaux, with a focus on the multifaceted history of the American worker…

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