American Joan Tower did not originally intend to become a composer, but at 18 she wrote a piece for a college class and immediately thought, “I can do better”--- and, as she said in 2018, “for the next 60 years, I tried to do better.”
Tower describes her music as “about … the rhythm of ideas.” That rhythm found its way into her musical language in her youth, through indigenous percussion music, when her family spent several years in Bolivia. Tower earned a doctoral degree in composition at Columbia, but she credits her time with a group she founded in 1969, the Da Capo Chamber Players, with helping her understand how to communicate ideas to performers.
At first, she wrote for chamber groups, but her 1981 Sequoia (a tone poem depicting the giant tree) led her to composing more frequently for large ensemble. She has since served as composer-in-residence for a number of U.S. orchestras. One of her most interesting projects was the 2008 composition Made in America… commissioned jointly by 65 orchestras in all 50 states… the largest such effort to date. As part of the sequence of premieres, Tower visited with 20 of the orchestras, conducting 8 of them.
Of her writing, Tower states, “It's…very important for me to be clear: I don't think my music ever gets complicated enough that you don't hear everything.“
Joan Tower… a Composing Woman.
Repertoire
Silver Ladders
Petroushskates
Made in America
Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman no. 6
Big Sky
Supporting Materials
Accessible websites relevant to the composer
A 2018 interview with Tower
An NPR interview with Tower from 2023
https://www.wisemusicclassical.com/composer/1605/Joan-Tower/
