Joan Tower
American composer, concert pianist and conductor · United States · On the map · Musicians · Born 1938 · age 88
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist, and conductor. Her work has been performed worldwide.
Joan Tower is read about 32 times a day, in 9 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 17 June 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 60 days, one point a day.
Something wrong?A life in dates
Media & music
Photos 1
Awards
About this person
Since gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem that structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has written a variety of instrumental works, including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman - something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man - the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was the pianist and a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates. The New Yorker has called her "one of the most successful woman composers of all time".
