Joan Tower (born 1938)
Joan Tower was born in New Rochelle, New York, but her family moved to Bolivia when she was nine. Her father (a mineralogist) insisted that she get a good music education. After moving back to the United States, she studied at Bennington and then Columbia University, and received her doctorate in 1968.
Joan Tower is one of the most beloved of living American composers. Concert audiences love her bold and dramatic orchestral music, which is frequently performed by American orchestras.
In something of a response to Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, in 1986 Joan Tower composed Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. She has since followed it with five other compositions of the same name that together form a 25-minute suite.
Joan Tower’s chamber music tends to be more challenging. Here is her 2005 composition DNA for percussion quartet:
In 2004, Joan Tower composed an orchestral work entitled Made in America that uses fragments of “America the Beautiful” as a recurring motif. It was commissioned specifically for performance by small and amateur orchestras, and it was performed in every state between 2005 and 2007.
Here is Made in America performed by young musicians in Round Top, Texas.