“Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields, a multimedia oratorio about the plight of Pennsylvania coal miners, has won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for music,” writes Brian Wise on Monday (4/20) at New York radio station WQXR’s website. “The 45-minute piece for chorus and instrumental sextet was premiered in April 2014 by the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia along with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the house band of the organization Bang on a Can, of which Wolfe is a founding member. The piece was commissioned by Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program…. Anthracite Fields draws on historical texts and data to examine Pennsylvania mining culture [and] cites names of miners who were killed or injured in the mines and texts from a labor movement speech; she also pays tribute to the women of the mining community. Also in the running for the $10,000 prize were Lei Liang’s saxophone concerto Xiaoxiang and John Zorn’s The Aristos, for violin, cello and piano…. The jury for the prize consisted of Carol Oja, a professor of music at Harvard University (Chair); Steven Mackey, a composer and professor of music at Princeton University; Maria Schneider, a composer and bandleader; and Mark Swed, music critic of the Los Angeles Times.”
Posted April 21, 2015
Julia Wolfe photo by Peter Serling
