Born on December 18, 1958, in Philadelphia; resides in New York City
Flower Power
Composed: 2019; revised 2024
Estimated length: 35 minutes
First performance: January 18, 2020, with John Adams conducting the Los Angeles Philharmonic and members of the Bang on a Can All Stars
Inspired by a quintessentially American chapter of history in the late 1960s/early 1970s, Flower Power is a work about “optimism, idealism, psychedelia, breaking with convention, and a little bit of love and peace,” according to Julia Wolfe. It continues a series of the composer’s large-scale reflections on landmark struggles that have shaped American history and culture. Beginning with Steel Hammer (2009), these also include the Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields (2014), Fire in My Mouth (2019), and Her Story (2022).
Each of the four works sets texts to music to address, respectively, the legends associated with John Henry and American folk idioms; the lives and legacy of coalminers from Wolfe’s native Pennsylvania who helped transform the young nation into a global power; the plight of garment industry laborers in New York City at the turn of the 20th century; and (prompted by the centennial of the 19th Amendment in 2020), the still-unfinished quest for equal rights for women.
Although Wolfe sets no texts in Flower Power, the work similarly conveys an unmistakable sense of a specific aspect of American identity. “As a post’60s child, I experienced the afterglow of the 1960s revolution,” she writes. “And the after-ring was still resounding in the late 1970s. There was a sense that a better world was possible.”
Indeed, the impulse behind the music collective Bang on a Can itself—including its dismantling of barriers separating classical and rock music, “highbrow” and pop culture—was grounded in a shared perception of the revolutionary hope that found widespread circulation in the 1960s and lingered into the following decade.
Wolfe cofounded Bang on a Can in 1987 together with like-minded colleagues and fellow composers David Lang and Michael Gordon (who has been her husband since 1984) and continues her involvement as co-artistic director. When they started out, writes William Robin in Industry, his history of the organization, “the Bang on a Canners wanted to restage past revolutions” by reconnecting in particular to the original sources that fed the emergence of American Minimalism.
Wolfe designed Flower Power as a kind of concerto grosso for Bang on a Can All-Stars, and orchestra. The All-Stars are a dynamic, amplified ensemble of six musicians who present the collective’s uninhibited, genre-defying aesthetic in international performances and projects.
It was the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who coined the term “flower power” in his 1965 essay How to Make a March/Spectacle. For its world premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under John Adams—himself a key influence from the older generation on Wolfe and Bang on a Can—the performance of Flower Power was supplemented by video installations, an abstract light show, and projections of archival footage of this period of dramatic change; it even included flowerlike confetti raining down from above. The imagery of counterculture love-ins, music festivals, and protests recalled an era when artistic and political forms of expression were deemed by many to be inseparable.
Wolfe subsequently revised the score, and it is this version which is being presented in these performances by Giancarlo Guerrero and the Nashville Symphony.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
Flower Power emerges from a sustained, “om”like drone on an open-ended interval (E-B) that swells and expands to accommodate overtones, fluctuating pitches, and a kaleidoscope of shifting timbres. With the instruction to be played as a “trippy, sonic meditation,” this music opens the door to a psychedelic soundscape that evokes historic and personal associations alike.
Wolfe describes “harnessing the energy and power of liberation and activism” of the period recalled by Flower Power. She uses imaginative touches of acoustic and amplified color—the percussion play an especially prominent role—to build a series of carefully organized climaxes and blissful, meditative retreats from tension. The ear-opening result fuses the orchestral sphere with the Bang on a Can aesthetic through which Wolfe first developed her artistic voice.
Scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons (2nd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, 2 percussionists (ride cymbals, medium cymbals, ratty cymbals, vibraphones, glockenspiel, flexatones, bass drum, crotales, tam-tam, and tambourines), harp and strings, as well as amplified solo ensemble of six musicians: clarinet (doubling bass clarinet, electric guitar (doubling acoustic guitar), electric organ (doubling piano), drum set (doubling vibraphone) medium cymbal, cello, and double bass
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
Featured on Julia Wolfe's Flower Power and Beethoven's Seventh — January 24 to 26, 2025
Nashville Symphony
Giancarlo Guerrero, conductor
BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS, ensemble
Back