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The Composer to Composer series features major American composers in conversation with each other about their work and leading a creative life. The intergenerational discussions will begin by exploring a single work with one composer interviewing the other. Attendees will gain insight into each work's genesis, sound, influence on the American orchestral canon, and be invited to ask questions of the artists.
On February 24, Conor Brown talks with Joan Tower about her work Sequoia (1981). Of the piece, Tower writes, "I think most composers would have to admit that they live, to various degrees, in the sound-worlds of other composers both old and new, and that what they consciously or unconsciously take from them enables them to discover what they themselves are interested in. Long ago, I recognized Beethoven as someone bound to enter my work at some point, because for many years I had been intimately involved in both his piano music and chamber music as a pianist. Even though my own music does not sound like Beethoven's in any obvious way, in it there is a basic idea at work that came from him. This is something I call the "balancing" of musical energies. In Sequoia, that concept is not only very much present in the score but it actually led to the title (which is meant in an abstract rather than a pictorial sense). What fascinated me about sequoias, those giant California redwood trees, was the balancing act nature had achieved in giving them such great height."
Announcing 2021 Visionary Awards Recipient
2021 First Commission
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Paloma Alonso
"2020"
Darian Donovan Thomas, violin
Shayna Dunkelman, percussion
Angélica Negrón, mentor
Paloma Alonso is a New York City native. She is 13 years old and attends the Léman Manhattan Preparatory School. Her parents, both classical concert pianists, were her first piano teachers. Alonso cites her Cuban father and Albanian mother as major inspirations for introducing her to music of all styles and genres. She began studying cello six years ago with Juilliard-trained teacher Yves Dharamraj and also pursues her passion for dance at the school of New York Theatre Ballet where she has trained rigorously since the age of four. Alonso joined the New York Philharmonic Young Composers Program in 2017. She commented that "This wonderful program opened a whole new world of expression to me. Composing is another tool that allows me to be expressive in a beautiful and artistic way". In December 2019, on a Young People's Concert, the Philharmonic performed Alonso's Sweating Bullets under the baton of its Music Director Jaap van Zweeden. The orchestral work was scheduled to be performed by the Philharmonic again in April of 2020 but, was unfortunately cancelled due to the Covid-19 Pandemic.