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 music as composer, performer, conductor, and educator. Her commissioners include the Emerson, Tokyo, and Muir quartets; soloists Alisa Weilerstein, Evelyn Glennie, Carol Wincenc, David Shifrin, Paul Neubauer, and John Browning; and the orchestras of Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Nashville, Albany NY, and Washington DC.

In 2020 Chamber Music America honored her with its Richard J. Bogomolny National Service Award; Musical America chose her to be its 2020 Composer of the Year; in 2019 the League of American Orchestras awarded her its highest honor, the Gold Baton. Tower is the first composer chosen for a Ford Made in America consortium commission of sixty-five orchestras. Leonard Slatkin and the Nashville Symphony’s recording of Made in America collected three Grammy awards: Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Best Classical Album, and Best Orchestral Performance.

She is the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award, for Silver Ladders, written for the St. Louis Symphony during her composer residency (1985-88). Other residencies include 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 has received honorary doctorates from Smith College, the New England Conservatory, and Illinois State University. She is Asher B. Edelman Professor in the Arts at Bard College, where she has taught since 1972.

Photo: Bernard Mindich