Photography by Peter Serling
HER STORY
music by Julia Wolfe
Co-commissioned by the Nashville Symphony, Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, Boston Symphony, and National Symphony Orchestras
Written for Lorelei Ensemble, Her Story invokes the words of historical figures and the spirit of pivotal moments to pay tribute to the centuries of ongoing struggle for equal rights, representation, and access to democracy for women in America. The 30-minute piece for orchestra and women’s vocal ensemble incorporates text from throughout the history of women's fight for equality, ranging from a letter written by Abigail Adams, to words attributed to Sojourner Truth, to public attacks directed at women protesting for the right to vote, to political satire, and is the latest in a series of Wolfe's compositions highlighting monumental and turbulent moments in American history and culture, and the people—both real and imagined, celebrated and forgotten—that defined them. NPR describes Julia Wolfe as "our labor documentarian, tackling historic issues that resonate today... By marrying history and music, Wolfe forces us to look to our past to protect our future."
The immersive, visual performances are directed by Anne Kauffman with scenic and lighting design by Jeff Sugg, costumes by Marion Talan, and produced by Bang on a Can.
PAST PERFORMANCES
“It has a ferocity that is literally written into the score... it looks back to suffrage with one wary eye toward the future steps this country still needs to take for something resembling true equality.”
Julia Wolfe, composer
Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. She draws inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, bringing a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them.
The 2019 world premiere of Fire in my mouth, a large-scale work for orchestra and women’s chorus, by the New York Philharmonic with The Crossing and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City, received extensive acclaim — one reviewer called the work “a monumental achievement in high musical drama, among the most commandingly imaginative and emotively potent works of any kind that I’ve ever experienced.” (The Nation Magazine) The work is the third in a series of compositions about the American worker: 2009’s Steel Hammer examines the folk-hero John Henry, and the 2015 Pulitzer prize-winning work, Anthracite Fields, a concert-length oratorio for chorus and instruments, draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches, and more to honor the people who persevered and endured in the Pennsylvania Anthracite coal region. Mark Swed of the LA Times wrote, Anthracite Fields “captures not only the sadness of hard lives lost…but also of the sweetness and passion of a way of daily life now also lost. The music compels without overstatement. This is a major, profound work.”
In addition to receiving the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Music, Wolfe was a 2016 MacArthur Fellow. She received the 2015 Herb Alpert Award in Music, and was named Musical America’s 2019 Composer of the Year. Julia Wolfe is co-founder/co-artistic director of New York’s legendary music collective Bang on a Can, and she is Artistic Director of NYU Steinhardt Music Composition.
Her music is published by Red Poppy Music and G. Ricordi & Co., New York (ASCAP) and is is distributed worldwide by the Universal Music Publishing Group.