Del Sol Featured Composer-
Joan Tower

Joan Tower
Even as she prepares for her 70th birthday in 2008, Joan Tower's career is as much about looking forward as it is about looking back on a career that already spans over five decades.

Hailed as, "One of the most successful woman composers of all time" in The New Yorker magazine, Joan Tower was inducted in 1998 into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters. She was the first woman ever to receive the Grawemeyer Award in Composition in 1990, and she was inducted into the Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University in the fall of 2004.

Since 1972, Tower has taught at Bard College where she is Asher Edelman Professor of Music. She continues as composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke's, a title she also held for eight years at the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Tower's other accolades include the 1998 Delaware Symphony's Alfred I. DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composers and the 2002 Annual Composer's Award from the Lancaster (PA) Symphony. "Tower has truly earned a place among the most original and forceful voices in modern American music" (The Detroit News).

Joan Tower's bold and energetic music, with its striking imagery and novel structural forms, has won large, enthusiastic audiences. From 1969-1984, she 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, with performances by orchestras including St. Louis, New York, San Francisco, Minnesota, Tokyo NHK, Toronto, the National Symphony and London Philharmonia. A choreographed version by The Royal Winnipeg Ballet toured throughout Canada, Europe, and Russia. Ms. Tower's tremendously popular five Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman have been played by over 400 different ensembles. Her 1993 ballet Stepping Stones was commissioned by choreographer Kathryn Posin for the Milwaukee Ballet.