Joan Tower

Joan Tower is one of this generation's most dynamic and colorful composers. Her bold and energetic music with its striking imagery and novel structural forms has won large enthusiastic audiences. This work for Cello and Pianowas written as a homage to Olivier Messiaen whose 'risk-taking' approach the composer felt had a special influence on her own works.

Score-Four works from a popular series of brass & percussion pieces that celebrate the achievements of extraordinary American women. Includes Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman Nos. 1 2 and 3 and Celebration Fanfare arranged by DanielForlano. Instrumental parts available on rental. Total duration ca. 16 minutes.

Work for Guitar Solo composed in 1985. Clocks is Joan Tower’s second excursion into guitar composition and she has crafted a magnificent representation of time. This measurable and memorable piece explores musicalexpressions of the concept of time using prolonged and distorted time measures. A group of repeated notes which tick like a swinging pendulum opens the work; this gesture resounds throughout the virtuosic nine-minute piece inthe repetition of various motives chords and musical figurations.

This chamber work by American composer Joan Tower who is known for her symbolic titles that draw on abstract action-filled imagery. Fantasy for Clarinet and Piano accompaniment is based on ...those Harbor Lights oneof Tower's own personal favourite pieces. This is an articulate and expressive piece styled in the same tradition as classical Sonatas like those of Brahms.

Joan Tower's Dumbarton Quintet (2008) for Piano Quintet. This work was premiered on 12 April 2008 at Dumbarton Oaks Washington DC by the Enso String Quartet with Joan Tower on thePiano. Following Stravinsky and Copland as the third commissioned composer by the Dumbarton Oaks Estate is of course quite daunting — particularly since these are two very strong composers that had an enormousinfluence on me. Their sense of musical continuity and profiling of ideas puts them in the category of musical geniuses. I have in fact dedicated two pieces to them: Petroushskates (to Stravinsky) and Fanfare for the UncommonWoman (to Copland). My musical debt to these two great composers is profound. The Dumbarton Quintet is a Piano Quintet dedicated to Susan Feder my longtime publisher at G. Schirmer and Associated MusicPublishers. (She is now with the Mellon Foundation). It was commissioned by the Dumbarton Oaks Estate. It is a 14-minute work in one movement that travels through several themes with different emotional contents.The first is a flowing line that is cast in a narrow space of smaller intervals first soft then loud but with a restrained kind of intensity that finally 'bursts out' into a more 'forward' and visceral type of intensity. Thisshifting between intensities in fact is part of the 'dna' of the work and as the piece progresses; each side tends to take on more and more extremes of expression. At particular points the 'softer' material becomes almostromantic consonant and singing in its expression whereas the 'louder' passages become the opposite — manic and aggressively dissonant. - Joan Tower

The second String Quartet by Joan Tower is a short but complex work addressing thoughts of death and loss written in memory of an old friend. The piece was commissioned by and is dedicated to the Tokyo String Quartet who firstperformed the piece in February 2002 at the 92nd Street Y New York City.Further inspired by the events in New York on September 11th 2001 the writing contains high sustained celestial material which slowly descends. Thiswriting is paired with more forceful driving and repetitive musical ideas that attempt to express the anger and pain that results from the loss of people in one's life.

Score and Parts-Orginally composed for oboe and wind quartet the composer created this version for oboe and strings in 1989. 

Standard US Set (without european suppl. parts)-G. Schirmer Concert Band - Grade 3-5 Joan Tower's first major work for winds is characterized by an energetic style that is colorful rhythmic and muscular. The title refers to the many contours of motives shaped in curved ribbonpatterns. Commissioned by the College Band Directors National Association and premiered at the national conference in 2001 this is an important addition to the contemporary repertoire for band. (Grade 5) (11:00)

Score-For clarinet solo and flute (piccolo) violin cello piano marimba vibes and percussion.