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. Music wasn’t on her radar.
But one day, a friend coaxed Wolfe into taking a peculiar music class, taught by a forward-thinking Quaker who didn’t care how much you knew about composing…
continue readingTom 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 reading[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…
continue readingAs part of the New York Commissions to honor the New York Philharmonic’s 175th season (2016-17) with New York-themed works by New York-based composers who have strong ties to the Philharmonic, Julia Wolfe presents a new evening-length piece for orchestra and women’s choir about women in the American work force. The Philharmonic plans to present this piece in 2018-19.
Wolfe has previously explored American labor history with Steel Hammer, her reimagining of the John Henry legend, and Anthracite Fields, an oratorio about Pennsylvania coal miners…
continue readingJulia Wolfe’s large-scale work for choir and orchestra Fire in my mouth is released digitally today (August 30) on Decca Gold. It was recorded live at the world premiere in January 2019 by the New York Philharmonic, The Crossing and The Young People’s Chorus of New York City. The physical album will be available October 4.
Fire in my mouth is based on the garment industry in New York City at the turn of the century, with a focus on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and its aftermath…
continue readingBy Allan Kozinn
Like most composers, Julia Wolfe is often in two places at once psychically: working on new pieces (with working defined as anything from cogitating and experimenting to actually putting the notes on paper) but also seeing that the backlist is getting attention. In recent weeks she has been putting the finishing touches on “Iron Maiden,” a new solo work for the percussionist Evelyn Glennie, and working on “Combat de Boxe,” for the Asko Ensemble of the Netherlands…
continue readingBy David Patrick Stearns
NEW YORK — Among downtown New York composers, few stick so relentlessly to the cutting edge as Julia Wolfe.
Now 50, she recently wrote a piece for nine bagpipes that sent her two children running for cover in her SoHo loft. Even her husband, Michael Gordon, who with her cofounded the composer collective Bang on a Can, has been moving toward more mainstream music for opera and film…
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 readingJulia Wolfe’s critically-acclaimed Fire in my mouth receives its UK premiere at the Edinburgh Festival August 21, by Marin Alsop and the Philharmonia Orchestra — with Anne Kauffman (director), Jeff Sugg (scenic, lighting, video and production designer) and Márion Talán (costume designer).
Premiered in January 2019 by the New York Philharmonic, Fire in my mouth is based on the garment industry in New York at the turn of the century, with a focus on the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and its aftermath…
continue readingOn 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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