In Wednesday’s (11/12) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jeremy Reynolds writes, “Quite a few composers are writing quite a lot of music about the America 250 anniversary…. ‘How do we want to mark that? …’ said Julia Wolfe, a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer … While … orchestras regularly premiere a new piece of music or several in a season, some have received public grants from the National Endowment for the Arts or other funders specifically to write music commemorating the occasion this season. So, who are the composers being called upon to mark the occasion? Aside from Wolfe, whose piece ‘Liberty Bell’ will be played by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra this weekend, there’s John Adams, Wynton Marsalis, Matthew Aucoin, Carlos Simon and Jessie Montgomery. There’s Kevin Puts, Mason Bates, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ellen Reid, Tania Leon, and Michael Abels…. Is there a unifying theme around the kinds of music being written in the classical world that could indicate an ‘American style?’… Critics and scholars toss words like ‘rock’ and ‘minimalism’ and ‘groove’ at [Wolfe’s] music, which, like all composers’, draws on a range of influences … There’s that word ‘minimalism’— it’s one of the dominant strains to emerge from American compositional schools in the past 50 years…. Ask a dozen composers and you’ll get a dozen different answers, but as we continue talking about American music this year, minimalism seems likely to be a recurrent thread.”
