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Composer Julia Wolfe's background includes theater, dance and vocal
training, and she approaches music composition with a sensibility
that combines the best of all these art forms. Regarded as one of
the key voices of her generation, Wolfe's music is muscular and
kinetic and experienced through the body. She creates journeys like
unfolding dramatic landscapes, a music meant to be entered into
by the listener, a music of "rare, strange beauty," says
composer Evan Ziporyn.
With influences as varied as Beethoven, Motown and Led Zeppelin,
Wolfe's compositions often contain bold, direct attacks, the body
energy of pop music, the unreigned expressiveness of rock and roll
and, above all, a sheer delight in sound. Wolfe's work is distinguished
by her intense focus on sound—the power of sound, the ways
in which sound is related to memory and experience, the possibilities
for new harmonies between familiar chords and microtonal tunings
or sounds found in nature and the urban world. With a care and attention
to detail that is both masterful and highly respectful, Wolfe's
music celebrates the extraordinary qualities contained within something
as specific as a gesture or an inflection.
Intuitive, organic, insistent—Wolfe's music is featured around
the world in performances at the Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival,
Tanglewood, the Next Wave Festival at BAM, the San Francisco Symphony's
Wet Ink Series, South Bank's Meltdown Festival (United Kingdom),
Settembre Musica (Italy), Festival International Cervantino (Mexico),
Confrontaties Festival (The Netherlands) and the Holland, Huddersfield
and Israel Music Festivals; in the choreography of Doug Varone,
Eliot Feld and the Dusseldorf Ballet; in Michael Blackwood's recent
documentary New York Composers; and in concert and theater productions
at The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Carnegie Hall, Lincoln
Center, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, The New York Public Theater,
The Kitchen, Arena Stage Theater, Merkin Concert Hall, La Mama and
the Los Angeles County Museum.
Wolfe began writing music for the stage as early as 1980 in productions
by the Wild Swan Theater, a company she co-founded. These days she
participates in new forms of presentation with large scale compositions
and multimedia works. Recent collaborations include the provocative
theater piece, House Arrest, with playwright and performing
artist Anna Deveare Smith; The Carbon Copy Building with
comic book artist Ben Katchor, the Ridge Theater Company and composers
Michael Gordon and David Lang; Lost Objects, the staged oratorio
with Gordon, Lang, writer Deborah Artman and the Barcelona theater
company, La Fura Dels Baus, at the Dresden Music Festival
in 2001; an evening-length music work with Anna Deveare Smith and
the Bang on a Can All-Stars;, as well as music theater projects
with the multimedia Ridge Theater Company and playwrights Mac Wellman
and Susan Mosakowski.
Other commissions include the Next Wave Festival at BAM, Lionheart,
the Kronos Quartet, The Library of Congress, the Australian Chamber
Orchestra, Netherlands Public Radio, the Koussevitzky Foundation,
the Rockefeller Multi-Arts Production Fund, the American Composers
Orchestra, Meet The Composer, the Rotterdam Arts Council, the New
York State Council on the Arts and the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable
Trust.
Born in 1958 in Philadelphia, PA, Wolfe holds a Bachelors Degree
from the Residential College at the University of Michigan and a
Masters of Music from the Yale School of Music, where she studied
with Martin Bresnick. Among her awards are a Charles Ives Scholarship
from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, two
ASCAP Foundation grants, a fellowship at Princetown University and
a Fullbright fellowship to the Netherlands. Her opera, The Carbon
Copy Building, received the 2000 Village Voice OBIE Award for
Best New American Work.
Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of New York's critically acclaimed
Bang on a Can Festival, Wolfe has been responsible for the presentation
of hundreds of new and unknown works over the past thirteen years.
A CD of her music, Julia Wolfe — Arsenal of Democracy,
is available on Point Records (Universal), and other recordings
of her work can be heard on Sony Classical, Argo/Decca and CRI.
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