Propulsive career brings composer Tower to Curtis Institute

Composers aren't typically warriors, and Joan Tower certainly wouldn't count herself as one. But others do. She recalls her shock at learning she was invited to speak on some high-art, cross-disciplinary panel because she's "outspoken."

"I always see myself as shy and retiring," she said this week while working with Curtis Institute of Music students on an all-Tower concert to be held Friday at Field Concert Hall.

But not for nothing have some of the most sympathetic conductors responded to her many suggestions by saying, "Joan, go away." Such recollections make the eminent, 72-year-old composer laugh.

Looking like one of those sensible-shoes people in a New Yorker cartoon, the outgoing, approachable Tower seems devoid of anything extraneous: The hair is short, the clothes are functional, the smile is broad, and her 75-piece output covers most genres - and tends to be driven by its most essential element, which is rhythm.

Her titles suggest movement and even aggression, from Silver Ladders to Strike Zones to String Force. In a conversation with ultra-contemplative minimalist Arvo Pärt, she found herself warning him away from her music because it's fast and eventful. "And he said, 'So why don't you write something simple and slow?'

"I've tried. You can't be something you're not."

Granted more face time, she would encourage the Curtis 20/21 ensemble, which is playing seven of her chamber works, to compose its own music as well.

Her belief that performers should compose (even if privately) isn't radical but startles nonetheless. She would like it to be the law: "At Bard College, where I teach, I would like to put in place a composition requirement for all the performers. In the 19th century, composers and performers were often the same people.

"Now we have the split. The split is wider, and it has created a problem. Classical music needs to be kept alive with an influx of new pieces."

Most people would agree in theory, but not so much in practice. Tower believes she's good for Beethoven. The most dynamic standard-repertoire performers have a strong relationship with new music - Yo-Yo Ma, for example - and Tower said it should be the same for audiences, "because people are empowered to sit up and listen [to new music]. They should be sitting up for Beethoven. You need to treat him with respect." She happily admits to writing 11 concertos, since their soloists are the express route to the belly of the symphonic beast.

Tower's professional life exists on both sides of that split. As a pianist, she was a founding member of New York City's Da Capo Chamber Players, and through that found her voice as a composer in the 1970s. At the time, she faced the hegemony of atonal serialism. But as a performer, Tower discovered mavericks such as George Crumb and pieces such as Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. Her reaction: "You mean I can write something that beautiful?" It saved her creative life.

The strong rhythmic life in Tower's pieces comes from a childhood full of ethnic dancing in La Paz, Bolivia, where she grew up with American parents - her father was a mineralogist. Moving to the United States to attend Bennington College and Columbia University, she came to think of composing as choreography in sound - one reason her pieces have such a sense of motion.

When she began landing high-visibility residencies with institutions such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra in the 1980s, Tower also became keenly aware of the problems modern composers face and wasn't afraid to discuss them publicly, culminating in a remarkable victory five years ago when she "toured" a new work.

Composers often have much-feted premieres, only to have the piece immediately forgotten. Though Tower is no stranger to major orchestras (she's now in residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, which will premiere her Stroke next month), in 2005 she assembled a consortium of 65 smaller-budget U.S. orchestras from Upstate New York to Alaska to play her Made in America over two years.

The cause of female composers also concerns Tower - one of her best-known pieces is Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman - even in Philadelphia, where the likes of Jennifer Higdon, Andrea Clearfield, and Julia Wolfe loom large.

"We're doing a lot better," Tower acknowledged. "It's been a long road . . . much more than in any art. Women painters and writers came up a bit earlier. Now we have several active people, and some people say there's no problem." She doesn't agree.

The more elusive problem is how classical music can be killed by its own efficiency. Musical notation is so precise as to be, in Tower's words, "microscopic."

Orchestras can often sight-read anything. But the difference between mastery and authority was particularly obvious when Tower wrote String Force (which is on the Curtis program) for unaccompanied violin for the 2010 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis. She wasn't allowed to work with any of the 16 finalists who played it, presumably so they would figure it out themselves. During performances, she sat with eyes wide.

"Jaime Laredo said, 'Are you OK?' " said Tower, who sat with the violinist and conductor at the competition. "I was freaking out. I do that with every piece."

The other night at Curtis, though, a String Force rehearsal caused a different kind of freakout. The Curtis concert is important, partly because it will be repeated at a new-music mecca, Columbia University's Miller Theatre. But here, the efficiency went to a different level.

"These kids have unbelievable chops and good instincts. They can play the bejesus out of these pieces. I've heard String Force played by top violinists. But [Curtis student] Nikki Chooi has really connected with it," Tower said. "He took ownership. He's made it fly for him."

Clearly, it was the sort of moment she lives for.

"Last night," she said, "I could hardly sleep!"