Thursday, April 20, 2017
Louisville Symphony Orchestra
Teddy Abrams, conductor
Louisville, KY

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Big Beautiful Dark and Scary is one continuous and compelling swell that lives up to every adjective in the title. Wolfe’s music is constantly pushing forward through waves of tension and tremolo until it finally releases a scant 10 seconds before the end of the piece.

— Sequenza21

Anthracite Fields: tours Pennsylvania

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[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…

June 8-10, conductor Kirill Petrenko and the Berlin Philharmonic gave the world premiere of Julia Wolfe’s Pretty. Co-commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, Houston Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, Pretty was the third premiere of Wolfe’s in as many weeks — beginning May 25 in San Francisco with the west coast premiere of Her Story, and then June 1-3 with the New York Philharmonic’s world premiere of unEarth…

Fire in my mouth, conducted by Music Director Jaap van Zweden, is nominated for two Grammy awards:

Best Contemporary Classical Composition (Julia Wolfe)

Best Engineered Album, Classical (Bob Hanlon and Lawrence Rock, engineers; Ian Good and Lawrence Rock, mastering engineers). Lawrence Rock is Audio Director of the New York Philharmonic; Ian Good is Assistant, Digital Platforms & Experience at the New York Philharmonic.

Fire in my mouth, co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, is a searingly vivid evocation of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire…

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLc44Ra387k width:300 height:169]From January 29 through February 2 the Aire de Jeu festival at Les Subsistances in Lyon, France — the International Laboratory for artistic creation dedicated to theatre, dance, and contemporary circus — features four works (Dig Deep, Dark Full Ride, Lad and Stronghold) by composer Julia Wolfe choreographed by Arkadi Zaides, Maud Le Pladec, Tania Carvalho and Faustin Linyekula…

Pre-order Julia Wolfe’s Steel Hammer before April 20 and receive advance copies, signed CDs, credit as an Associate Producer (order before February 18), and special hand-drawn score page from Steel Hammer, the hotly anticipated album by Julia Wolfe, featuring the Bang on a Can All-Stars and Trio Mediaeval.

Inspired by her love for the music and lore of Appalachia, Julia Wolfe based her text for Steel Hammer (called a “wild hybrid” by the New York Times) on over 200 versions of the John Henry ballad, exploring the subject of human vs…

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…