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Julia Wolfe: Composer of the Year 2019
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Michael Gordon

Natural History: PBS doc "Symphony for Nature"

The PBS documentary "Symphony for Nature" is broadcast nationwide tells the story of the premiere of Michael Gordon's inspirational work Natural History for orchestra, chorus, and Native American drummers.

The full recording of Natural History has been released on Cantaloupe Music in conjunction with the broadcast of the documentary. Click here to stream the full recording.

Gordon's work, inspired by Crater Lake National Park in Oregon and commissioned by the Britt Orchestra as part of the 100th anniversary of America’s National Park Service, premiered the morning of July 29, 2016, on the rim of the lake with musicians spatially situated around the site.

The documentary follows Gordon, musicians, conductor Teddy Abrams, members of the Klamath Tribe and park personnel as they prepare for the premiere and reflect on the importance, beauty and spiritual-qualities of Crater Lake and how the site-specific performance of Gordon's work combines with their experience of the natural wonder.

The work was performed by 40 members of the Britt Festival Orchestra (with conductor Teddy Abrams), plus a 70-voice choir, 30 brass and percussionists, and 15 members of the local Klamath Tribe who play and sing on the "Steiger Butte Drum", a third-generation Northern-style powwow drum. Giiwas (Crater Lake), which means "A Spiritual Place", is the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribal people.

Gordon visited the lake in the summer of 2015 and winter of 2016 and spent time with both Park Superintendent Craig Ackerman and Park Historian Stephen Mark. He also conversed with local writer Lee Juillerat who provided him with additional background on the history of the region and native lore and tradition. On his last trip to the park, Gordon spent a week in a ranger's house in the dead of winter. During that period, he worked with the Klameth tribal drummers, who are the soloists of the piece.

For Gordon, this work is “designed to be an experiential spectacle. The idea is to draw out the natural sounds in and around Crater Lake and connect the natural sonic environment to the orchestra.”

He continues:

In my time at Crater Lake last winter, the thing I was thinking about is the symphony that’s going on all year long: the sounds of the animals, the birds chirping, the wind blowing, even that sound of the expanse of the lake. I was imagining this chorus of the animals, the symphony that’s been going for centuries.

The circumstances of this piece are unique — to be able to write a piece of music that’s going to be played at Crater Lake and to work with such a variety of musical forces: Tribal musicians, a full symphony and chorus, brass orchestra and percussionists. It’s a pretty overwhelming feeling. It’s thrilling and humbling.

For more information about this work or anything from Michael Gordon's extensive catalogue, info [at] redpoppymusic [dot] com (please write us)!

David Lang

world premiere: prisoner of the state

This season, the New York Philharmonic concludes their three-week-long Music of Conscience initiative, as well as their subscription season, with the world premiere of David Lang’s opera prisoner of the state on June 6–8, 2019, conducted by their new Music Director Jaap van Zweden. Co-commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, Rotterdam's de Doelen Concert Hall, London’s Barbican Centre, Barcelona’s l’Auditori, Bochum Symphony Orchestra, and Bruges’s Concertgebouw, prisoner of the state is the story of a woman who disguises herself as a prison guard to rescue her husband from unjust political imprisonment.

With a libretto by the composer that refers self-consciously to Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera, prisoner of the state features the Philharmonic debuts of soprano Julie Mathevet as The Assistant, tenor Alan Oke as The Leader, and baritone Jarrett Ott as The Prisoner, as well as bass-baritone Eric Owens as The Jailor. It will be directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer — who has directed works for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera, among others — in her Philharmonic debut.

Along with many accolades, Lang is recognized for his vocal music, including his Pulitzer Prize-winning the little match girl passion, and for writing narrative music for dance, films, and theatrical productions, as well as his operas. He earned Golden Globe, Critics' Choice, and Academy Award nominations for his music in Paolo Sorrentino's film Youth; he has recently scored Paul Dano's directorial debut, Wildlife, which is released in theaters later this year.

Lang's operas include the loser, which features a failed piano student on a platform-stage, seemingling floating in mid-air as he recounts a life lived in the shadows of his famous friend Glenn Gould; the whisper opera, during which the musicians never perform above a hush; anatomy theater, which follows the astonishing progression of an English murderess: from confession to execution and, ultimately, public dissection before a paying audience of fascinated onlookers; the difficulty of crossing a field, a fully-staged production based on Ambrose Bierce's short story about a plantation owner who goes missing while crossing his own farm, and modern painters for Santa Fe Opera, directed by Francesca Zambello.

The Seattle Symphony and the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra both premiere new orchestral works by Lang in this current season. symphony without a hero premiered at the Seattle Symphony on February 8, inspired by Anna Akhmatova and her "Poem without a Hero," which Lang came to through a childhood obsession with Shostakovich and Russian music. On March 14-15, the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra presents the premiere of harmony and understanding for orchestra and audience (co-commissioned by the New World Symphony), in which the conductor teaches the audience its role at the beginning, before the orchestra comes out, and they perform the rest of the piece together. No one is a spectator; the audience is not the audience, rather a chorus of community members contributing to making something beautiful. Lang is continually experimenting with turning audiences into performers. This fall as part of a project to raise funds to repair the broken instruments owned by The School District of Philadelphia, he wrote symphony for broken instruments, specifically for the sounds that the instruments make in their broken state, performed by a host of professional and amateur musicians around the Philadelphia-area.

Julia Wolfe

world premiere: Fire in my mouth

This season, the New York Philharmonic, led by their new Music Director Jaap van Zweden, examines New York City's roots as a destination of immigrants during New York Stories: Threads of Our City. The centerpiece for the season is the world premiere, January 24–26, of Julia Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth, commissioned by the orchestra, Cal Performances at the University of California, Berkeley; the Krannert Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University Musical Society at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Wolfe's music focuses on the garment industry in New York City at the turn of the century — specifically the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 garment workers, most of them young, female immigrants. The immersive, multimedia performance features the Philharmonic debut of the 36 women of the chamber choir The Crossing, directed by Donald Nally, as well as the Philharmonic debut of Jeff Sugg as scenic, lighting, video, and projection designer.

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. Anthracite Fields was presented by the Philharmonic and won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music, while the recording with the Bang on a Can All Stars and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street was nominated for a 2016 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. Wolfe was awarded a MacArthur fellowship in 2016.

The title of Wolfe's new work comes from labor activist Clara Lemlich Shavelson, who, when looking back on her radical youth said, “Ah, then I had fire in my mouth,” though the titular fire also refers to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Wolfe is using her signature intensive research methods, drawing on oral histories, speeches, interviews, and historical writings. The music will capture the roar of hundreds of sewing machines and the language of protest to recreate the world of women working in New York garment factories in the early 20th century. Throughout the current season, Wolfe has workshopped Fire in my mouth with the Philharmonic's three commissioning partners. Campus-wide discussions about history, music, and creative writing have been an important part of Wolfe's writing process.

Wolfe's previous works on labor history have had extended lives beyond the premieres, with a Steel Hammer stage show and a performance of Anthracite Fields in coal country. The Steel Hammer stage show, which toured the country in the fall of 2015 before ending at BAM's Next Wave Festival, incorporated the work of four American playwrights into the original art ballad. At the same time, Wolfe took the Bang on a Can All-Stars and the Choir of Trinity Wall Street to Pennsylvania coal country to share Anthracite Fields with the community who inspired her, in a benefit concert for the Anthracite Heritage Museum in Scranton. To date Anthracite Fields has also been performed in Philadelphia, PA; New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Berkeley, CA; Champaign-Urbana, IL; Trenton, NJ; Copenhagen, Denmark; Athens, Greece; Amsterdam, the Netherlands; and Prague, the Czech Republic. It will be performed at The Kennedy Center on March 13, 2018, and at Carnegie Hall on December 1, 2018.