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Big risks and adventurous friends: How composer Julia Wolfe became a renegade

September 15, 2022
NPR Music
Editors’ Picks

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…

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David Lang

love fail (2012) 60'

Text by David Lang (after Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner)

SSAA playing simple percussion instruments

love fail was co-commissioned by The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Secrest Artists Series at Wake Forest University, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa. Movement 4, 'the wood and the vine', was commissioned by The Newman Center for the Performing Arts at University of Denver, The University of California at Riverside, and the Santa Fe Concert Association in Santa FE, NM. Movement 10, 'I live in pain', in a different version, was originally written for “TheCrossing,” Donald Nally, conductor.

Program Note Libretto Video Recordings rent music score preview More Info

works
David Lang

love fail – arr. female chorus (2012, rev. 2016) 60'

Text by David Lang (after Lydia Davis, Marie de France, Gottfried von Strassburg, Béroul, Thomas of Britain and Richard Wagner)

SSAA chorus (or 8 solo women singers) playing simple percussion instruments

The Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2012 Next Wave Festival, The International Festival of Arts & Ideas, The John F. Kennedy Center Abe Fortas Memorial Fund, The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA, The Wake Forest University / Secrest Artists Series, and Hancher Performances at the University of Iowa

Program Note Libretto Recordings rent music score preview More Info

works
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