13 Facts About Joan Tower

Joan Tower was born on September 6,1938 and is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor.

Joan Tower returned to the United States as a young woman to study music, first at Bennington College and then at Columbia University where she studied under Otto Luening, Jack Beeson, and Vladimir Ussachevsky and was awarded her doctorate in composition in 1968.

In 1972 Joan Tower accepted a faculty position at Bard College in composition, a post she continues to hold today.

In 1985, a year after leaving the Da Capo Players, Joan Tower accepted a position at the St Louis Symphony Orchestra where she was a composer-in-residence until 1988.

Joan Tower became the first woman recipient of the Grawemeyer Award for Music in 1990 for her composition Silver Ladders.

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In 1993, under commission from the Milwaukee Ballet, Joan Tower composed Stepping Stones, a selection from which she would go on to conduct at the White House.

In 1999 Tower accepted a position as composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St Luke's and in 1998 she won the Delaware Symphony's prestigious Alfred I DuPont Award for Distinguished American Composer.

In 2002 Joan Tower won the Annual Composer's Award from the Lancaster Symphony.

In 2008, Joan Tower's Made in America and the recording of it by the Nashville Symphony conducted by Leonard Slatkin won three Grammy Awards: in the categories Best Orchestral Performance, Best Classical Album and Best Classical Contemporary Composition.

Joan Tower is currently the Asher B Edelman Professor of Music at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, as well as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Joan Tower serves on the Artistic Advisory panel of the BMI Foundation.

Joan Tower's work became more colorful and has often been described as impressionistic.

Joan Tower often composes with specific ensembles or soloists in mind, and aims to exploit the strengths of these performers in her composition.