JULIA WOLFE - USA
BORN 18 DECEMBER
Julia Wolfe (born December 18, 1958 in Philadelphia) is an American composer and professor of music at New York University. According to the Wall Street Journal, Wolfe's music has "long inhabited a terrain of its own, a place where classical forms are recharged by the repetitive patterns of minimalism and the driving energy of rock." Her work Anthracite Fields, an oratorio for chorus and instruments, was awarded the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. She has also received the Herb Alpert Award (2015) and was named a MacArthur Fellow (2016).
Wolfe has written a major body of work for strings, from quartets to full orchestra. . Her quartets, as described by The New Yorker magazine "combine the violent forward drive of rock music with an aura of minimalist serenity [using] the four instruments as a big guitar, whipping psychedelic states of mind into frenzied and ecstatic climaxes."
The influence of pop culture can be heard in many of Wolfe's works, including Lick and Believing for the Bang on a Can All-Stars. Lick, based on fragments of funk, has become a manifesto for the new generation of pop-influenced composers.
Wolfe drew on oral histories, interviews, geography, local rhymes, and coal advertisements for her Pulitzer Prize-winning piece Anthracite Fields, an oratorio about the coal mining community of her native Pennsylvania which premiered in Philadelphia and was performed at the New York Philharmonic Biennial in the spring of 2014.
♫ LISTEN
Beliving by Julia Wolfe
Beliving by Julia Wolfe
SYLVIA MAESSEN - THE NETHERLANDS
BORN 18 DECEMBER
Sylvia Maessen studied oboe, composition, classical double bass (Edward Mebius) and jazz double bass (Koos Serierse) at the Hilversums Conservatory. She performs regularly in various ensembles like Sinfonia R’dam, Philharmonia A’dam, Opera Front, Opera Trionfo (classical), Alice in Dixieland (jazz), Trimoza (worldmusic) and Frank Groothof (theatre).
Her compositions are primarily in the modern classical style. Her arrangements span many genres, from classical to jazz, pop and world music. She wrote for musicians like Eleonore Pameijer (flute), Marja Bon, Marcel Worms (piano), Wolfgang Guggenberger (trumpet), Carel Kraaijenhof (bandoneon), ensembles like the Nederlands Blazers Ensemble, Amstel Quartet (sax4), Gauguin Ensemble, Gergjev festival, A’dam Brass. In 2018 and 2019 she will compose the compulsory vocal work for the International Vocal Composition Den Bosch.
She won several prizes for composition and is member of the Dutch composers collective Nieuw Geneco. Her CD “Inspired by poetry” (2014) with all her vocal compositions, performed by her sister – soprano Irene Maessen – and friends, got 4 stars in de Volkskrant.
♫ LISTEN
Over het Water by Sylvia Maessen
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