Luna Pearl Woolf

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Luna Pearl Woolf is a Canadian-American composer, producer, and dramaturg. Her oeuvre includes opera, chamber music, orchestra, and choral compositions including works for dramatic chamber music, silent film scores, and musical story-telling. Her works have been commissioned Carnegie Hall, Washington National Opera [1] , Tapestry Opera [2] , Minnesota Sinfonia, Salle Bourgie, ECM+, Perelman Performing Arts Center [3] , Concours Musical International de Montréal [4] , among others, with collaborations with artists including Jeremy Irons, Cornelia Funke, Joyce DiDonato, Frederica von Stade, Royce Vavrek, David Van Taylor, Matt Haimovitz, and Dame Evelyn Glennie amongst many others.

Contents

In 2014 she was an inaugural recipient of Opera America's first grant for female composers. [5]

Biography

Luna Pearl Woolf was born in 1973 in Western Massachusetts. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University, graduating Summa Cum Laude in music composition in 1996, and a Master of Arts from Smith College in music composition. [6]

Woolf's principal composition teachers have been Mario Davidovsky, Augusta Read Thomas, Lewis Spratlan and Don Wheelock. Woolf was awarded the Ellen Taafe Zwilich Prize from the IAWM, the John Greene Scholarship and John Knowles Paine Fellowship from Harvard University, and the Settie Lehman Fatman Prize from Smith College.

Canada’s CBC Music named the JUNO award-nominated recording Vagues et Ombres including Woolf’s 2022 work, Contact, as their #1 Classical Album of the year [7] ; and her 2021 composer-portrait album, LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood (Pentatone Oxingale Series) was nominated for a GRAMMY-Award. [8]

She is a co-founder of Oxingale Productions, Inc. which includes Oxingale Records and Oxingale Music, and is a recording producer with producing credits on Leaf, Atma, Oxingale and PENTATONE albums. [9] She is Creative Mentor & Dramaturg at Musique 3 Femmes. [10]

She currently resides in Montréal, Canada.

Oxingale Records

Luna Pearl Woolf along with cellist Matt Haimovitz, created the label Oxingale Records, a sub-label of PENTATONE, in 2000. [11]

Oxingale Music

Oxingale Music is an independent music publisher launched in 2010 focusing on exceptional contemporary composers, featuring works from solo to chamber to opera and beyond. A destination for cellists, their catalog is rich in music for strings and string ensembles, including original works and innovative arrangements from the traditional repertoire, Jazz and rock. Current represented composers include Luna Pearl Woolf, Lewis Spratlan, David Sanford, Anna Pidgorna, Matt Haimovitz (arranger), Thibault Bertin-Maghit (arranger), and Niloufar Nourbakhsh. [12]

Critical responses

Number Our Days

A photographic oratorio, based on Jamie Livingston's "Photo of the Day" with music by Luna Pearl Woolf and libretto and concept by David Van Taylor, a late friend of Livingston. [13] The work was commissioned by the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), and was premiered April 12-14, 2024, conducted by Kamna Gupta, directed by Ty Defoe, and co-produced by Trinity Church Wall Street. Performers include countertenor John Holiday, The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, NOVUS NY, Trinity Youth Chorus, and Downtown Voices. [14]

Jacqueline

An opera in four movements for soprano and cello about the life of legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré. Commissioned by Tapestry Opera for Matt Haimovitz and Marnie Breckenridge. [18] Nominated for five Dora Awards [19] , winning for outstanding performance by an individual (Marnie Breckenridge). [20]

The Pillar

First performed by The Washington Chorus for its New Music for New Age Series, February 28, 2016. [25] Performed at the National Presbyterian Church by cellist Matt Haimovitz, soprano Marnie Breckenridge, tenor and Jonathan Blalock, baritone James Shaffran, and The Washington Chorus dorected by Julian Watchner. [26]

The Pillar is based on Diana B. Henriques' book The Wizard of Lies; Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust. Woolf was among the first recipient of the Opera America's Discovery Grant in 2014 to develop this work. [27]

Angel Heart, a music storybook

A children's story told in words and music. First performed in September 2014 with narration by actor Jeremy Irons, with words from Cornelia Funke. The New York Times writes: “Ms. Woolf’s atmospheric music serves a different purpose… her compositions add psychological nuances and emotional depth through ever-changing textures. The … ensemble produces a dazzling variety of sounds, from the rich and earthy to the ethereal.” [28]

Entanglement

Entanglement is a composition for a cello and percussion duo that was inspired by Melange a Trois, an “instrumental theatre work that featured percussionist Krystina Marcoux who used the body of a cello for her instrument”. The piece was written for one player that bowed the cello, and another that struck and caressed the cello.

The Calgary Herald says, “the cello is bowed by one player and struck and caressed by the other, it appears that Sandvoss suddenly is using four arms to play, giving the instrument a sensual quality, perhaps best summarized as an opera aria for cello, entangling a dramatic theatricality and an erotic intimacy between instrument and performer(s)”...“carefully considered the relationship of physicality to the performers’ bodies, for example their height, physical performance characteristics and their physical relationship with the instrument. Set in shards of imitative Bach cello suite fragments, and buttressed with non-tonal impressionistic properties, both percussive or spectral, the discontinuous narrative was something to be experienced, and far less so to be analyzed”. [29]

Notable works

Discography

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