Inspiring
Heights:
Joan Tower
by Peter Aaron
As one of America’s foremost contemporary
composers, Bard College professor Joan Tower has racked up
quite a healthy shelf of honors during her nearly 50-year
career: inductions into both the American Academy of Arts
and Letters (1998) and Harvard University’s Academy
of Arts and Sciences (2004); a full concert of her work for
Carnegie Hall’s Making Music Series (2004); an honorary
doctorate from the New England Conservatory (1972); prestigious
posts as composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s
(since 1997), Utah’s Deer Valley Festival (since 1998),
the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (1985-1988), Connecticut’s
Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (1995-2003), and the Chamber
Music Society of Lincoln Center (2007-present); numerous commissions
from the New York Philharmonic; and the lucrative, highly
coveted Grawemeyer Award for musical composition (1990), of
which she is the first female recipient.
This year, however, Tower found herself up for a true trifecta,
garnering not one but three Grammy nominations for 2007’s
Made in America (Naxos Records), her latest recording. The
disc, which was recorded by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Leonard Slatkin, received nods in the categories
of Classical Album and Orchestral Performance, and the title
work itself was nominated for Best Classical Contemporary
Composition. While the litany of above prizes from the conservatory
world is enough to make any composer salivate, the Grammy
recommendations represent (this goes to press prior to the
awards ceremony, which was set for February 10) a whole new
level: acknowledgement by the recording industry, the chance
to mingle and get acquainted with her peers in the pop field,...
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