About
Julia Wolfe sits at a genuinely unusual crossroads: her compositions carry the relentless forward momentum of rock and the meditative patience of minimalism, all within a classical framework. The Wall Street Journal put it well, noting her music occupies a terrain where classical forms are recharged by repetitive patterns and driving energy. She co founded Bang on a Can in 1987 alongside composers Michael Gordon and David Lang, a collective that grew into one of contemporary music's most vital organisations, complete with its own record label, Cantaloupe Music. Her Pulitzer Prize winning oratorio Anthracite Fields drew on oral histories, coal advertisements, and local rhymes to tell the story of Pennsylvania's coal mining communities, and it landed her the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Her string writing has drawn comparisons to a massive guitar, whipping up what The New Yorker called frenzied and ecstatic climaxes, while pieces like Lick pull directly from funk, and My Lips From Speaking grew out of an Aretha Franklin riff. She holds a professorship in music composition at New York University and was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2016.