All-Star Gala Concert at Bard Honors Composer Joan Tower at 75

Joan Tower

Joan Tower

(ANNANDALE-on-HUDSON, N.Y.) – The Bard College Conservatory of Music celebrates composer Joan Tower, one of America’s most important living composers, with a gala concert, “Joan Tower and Friends Celebrate Her 75th Birthday,” to benefit the Joan Tower Composition Scholarship, on Saturday, September 7, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. The concert will be held in the László Z. Bitó Conservatory Building Performance Space at Bard College.

The program features six Tower compositions performed by Tower, Blair McMillen, and Kayo Iwama on piano; soprano Dawn Upshaw; cellist Peter Wiley; violist Steven Tenenbom; the Daedalus Quartet; and the Horszowski Trio. A reception will follow the concert in the Blithewood mansion.

Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than 50 years, she has made lasting contributions to musical life in the United States as composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Her works have been commissioned by major ensembles, soloists, and orchestras, including the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., among others.

In 1990, Tower became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Silver Ladders. She was the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of 65 orchestras. The Nashville Symphony and conductor Leonard Slatkin recorded that work, Made in America, with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra for the Naxos label. The top-selling recording won three 2008 Grammy awards: Best Classical Contemporary Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance.

From 1969 to 1984, Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award–winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her most popular works. Her first orchestral work, Sequoia, quickly entered the repertory. Tower’s tremendously popular five Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman have been played by more than 500 different ensembles. She is currently Asher Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.

Tower’s composer-residencies with orchestras and festivals include a decade with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra’s Composer of the Year for their 2010–11 season, as well as the St. Louis Symphony, Deer Valley Music Festival, and Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. She is in residence as the Albany Symphony’s Mentor Composer partner in the 2013–14 season.

Tower’s compositions cross many genres: Descending (2000), for chorus, commissioned and premiered by the Cantorum Virtousi; Copperwave (2006), written for brass quintet; DNA (2003), a percussion quintet commissioned for Frank Epstein and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble; Fascinating Ribbons (2001), her foray into the world of band music, premiered at the annual conference of College Band Directors; Vast Antique Cubes/Throbbing Still (2000), a solo piano piece for John Browning; Tambor (1998), for the Pittsburgh Symphony under the baton of Mariss Jansons; and her ballet Stepping Stones (1993), commissioned by choreographer Kathryn Posin for the Milwaukee Ballet and revisited by Posin with the Bulgarian Ballet in June 2011.

Tower has received honorary degrees from the New England Conservatory (2003) and Smith College (2013). She has three Naxos recordings — two orchestral and one chamber — planned for release next year.

Tickets to the benefit gala are $7,500 for sponsorship, $75 for individuals, and 75 cents for students. To purchase tickets or for more information, call (845) 758-7196 or e-mail concertoffice@bard.edu.

 

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