Joan Tower

Joan Tower (born September 6, 1938, New Rochelle, New York, U.S.) is an American composer, pianist, and conductor who is chiefly known for her colorful and often whimsical orchestral compositions.

Tower began playing the piano when she was six years old. At age nine she moved to Bolivia with her father, who was a geologist and mining engineer. While playing with South American bands, Tower became interested in rhythm and percussion. She attended Bennington College, Vermont, graduating in 1961, and then completed her music studies at Columbia University, New York, earning a master’s degree in composition (1965) and a doctorate in musical arts (1978). In 1969 Tower formed the Da Capo Chamber Players, for which she played piano and wrote many pieces, including Platinum Spirals (1976), Petroushskates (1980), and Wings (1981); she left the group in 1984.

In 1972 Tower began teaching at Bard College. About this time she was inspired by the works of Olivier Messiaen and George Crumb to move away from the 12-tone method and toward tonal music, composing such pieces as Black Topaz (1976) and Noon Dance (1982). Her notable orchestral compositions included Sequoia (1981), Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman (1987), and Silver Ladders (1987). For the latter work, Tower became the first woman to receive the Grawemeyer Award. She also wrote concertos for clarinet (1988), oboe (1989), flute (1989), piano (1985 and 1996), violin (1991), percussion (2001), and bassoon (2013). The acclaimed Made in America was first performed in 2005, and it later won a Grammy Award for best classical contemporary composition. Tower’s many commissions included Stroke (2010) for the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Wild Summer (2017) for the Jasper String Quartet’s Four Seasons | Four Composers project; and 1920/2019 (2020) for the New York Philharmonic’s Project 19, a celebration of the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment.