CCM Welcomes Pultizer Prize-Winning Composer Julia Wolfe for Residency in March of 2016

Composer Julia Wolfe. Photo by Peter Serling.

CCM welcomes 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Julia Wolfe for a two-day residency on March 10 and 11, 2016. During her stay in Cincinnati, Wolfe will work with students in CCM’s Composition Department during their Composition Symposium.

“I’ve known Julia Wolfe since the early 1990s, when we both had residencies in Amsterdam,” explains CCM Professor of Composition Michael Fiday. “It’s such a thrill to be hosting her as a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer at CCM all these years later.”

In addition to her time with CCM’s rising artists, Wolfe will also attend the CCM Philharmonia’s annual “American Voices” concert at 8 p.m. on March 11, where Director of Orchestral Studies Mark Gibson will lead the ensemble in a performance of Wolfe’s 2004 work Cruel Sister.

A monumental half-hour piece inspired by an old English tale of the same name, Cruel Sister will be performed along with the world premiere of a new symphony by CCM Norman Dinerstein Professor of Composition Scholar Douglas Knehans and a concerto performance of Jennifer Hidgon’s Soprano Sax Concerto featuring CCM Faculty Artist and Performance Studies Division Head James Bunte.

“Julia’s music is both sensitive and visceral, and Cruel Sister is a powerful and bracing piece,” says Fiday. “We’re excited she’ll be here to spend time with our performers and our composition students. Can’t wait!”

Wolfe recently won the Pulitzer Prize for her concert-length oratorio Anthracite Fields, which chronicles the lives and hardships of miners in Pennsylvania’s coalfields. She has also regularly collaborated with and written for some of the world’s most recognized ensembles including the Kronos String Quartet, the Munich Chamber Orchestra and the BBC Orchestra. She is also the co-founder of Bang on a Can, a New York-based community whose mission is to create and perform new music.

Later on this March, the Kronos Quartet and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra will perform Wolfe’s My Beautiful Scream as part of this year’s MusicNOW Festival.

Learn more about Julia Wolfe by visiting juliawolfemusic.com.

CCM and Constella Festival Present the Music of Missy Mazzoli on Oct. 16

Constella Festival Composer-in-Residence Missy Mazzoli.

Café MoMus, CCM’s new music ensemble, explores the work of Constella Festival Composer-in-Residence Missy Mazzoli in a free concert performance at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 16, in CCM’s Patricia Corbett Theater.

Described by the New York Times as “one of the more consistently inventive, surprising composers now working,” Mazzoli is a composer of chamber, orchestral and operatic works. Her music has been played the world over by performers as varied the Kronos Quartet, eighth blackbird, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, violinist Jennifer Kohn, violist Nadia Sirota, Dublin’s Crash Ensemble and her own group, Victoire.

Victoire’s debut album, titled Cathedral City, was named one of 2010′s best classical albums by the New York Times, the New Yorker and NPR. Her opera, Song from the Uproar, premiered in New York in 2012. The original cast recording was released in November.

Mazzoli joins CCM’s new music ensemble, led by music director Jing Huan, for a special performance as part of the 2013 Constella Festival. On Sunday, Nov. 3, CCM and the Constella Festival will also co-present a unique staged performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion. You can learn more about that performance here.