American composer Joan Tower’s career in classical music has not only been “uncommon,” it has been downright extraordinary. Named Musical America’s 2020 Composer of the Year, she is regarded as one of America’s most important living composers, with works that have been commissioned and performed by major orchestras, chamber ensembles and soloists worldwide. Her compositions have garnered Grammy Awards, the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition, and in 2019 she was awarded the League of American Orchestras’ highest honor, the Gold Baton. When she began her career in 1968 however, those kinds of accolades were virtually unheard of for a woman.
Following the breakthrough success of her 1981 orchestral work Sequoia, Tower became composer-in-residence with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, where then-Music Director Leonard Slatkin became her champion. It was during this residency, in 1987, that she composed the first of what would eventually become six short works, collectively called Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. Sometimes viewed as the feminist counterpoint to Aaron Copland’s 1943 Fanfare for the Common Man , the works pay tribute to Copland, while simultaneously honoring various “uncommon” women in music, including American conductors Marin Alsop and JoAnn Falletta, and other “women who are adventurous and take risks.” Composed over the course of 29 years, the six fanfares are orchestrated for various ensembles, ranging from the brass and percussion utilized in Copland’s work, to full orchestra.
Fanfare No. 1, dedicated to Marin Alsop, employs the same instrumentation Copland used, with the addition of marimba, chimes, glockenspiel, and drums. It is the most often performed of the six Fanfares. Opening in a similar fashion to the Copland work, Tower quickly sets a less solemn, more celebratory tone. With highly virtuosic writing for every instrument, the three-minute work brilliantly offers a snapshot of fierce energy and swaggering confidence. The “uncommon woman” fearlessly proclaims her prodigious skill and imposing power – much as Joan Tower herself has done, for over 50 years.
