JOAN TOWER

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Joan Tower is widely regarded as one of the most important American composers living today. During a career spanning more than sixty 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 Alisa Weilerstein, Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, and Paul Neubauer; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Nashville, Albany NY, and Washington DC among others. Recent commissions include the cello concerto A New Day and 1920/2019 for orchestra. Her saxophone concerto for Steven Banks will have a 2026 premiere.

Tower is the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of sixty-five orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony recorded it (along with Tambor and Concerto for Orchestra). In 2008 the album collected three Grammy awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance.

In 1990 she became the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Silver Ladders, a piece she wrote for the St. Louis Symphony where she was Composer-in-Residence from 1985-88. Other residencies with orchestras include a 10-year residency with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s (1997-2007) and the Pittsburgh Symphony (2010-11). Tower was co-founder and pianist for the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players from 1970-85. She is Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.

Photo: Bernard Mindich