Joan Tower

Joan Tower is one of this generation's most dynamic and colorful composers. Her bold and energetic music with its striking imagery and novel structural forms has won large enthusiastic audiences. This work for Cello and Pianowas written as a homage to Olivier Messiaen whose 'risk-taking' approach the composer felt had a special influence on her own works.

Platinum Spirals was commissioned in 1976 by the American National Endowment for the Arts and dedicated to the composer?s father who was a geologist and mining engineer. It explores the malleability and flexibility of the metal stretching the melodic lines into spirals. Scored for solo Violin. Joan Tower (b. 1938) is a contemporary American composer pianist and conductor. She has become renowned for her bold and spirited compositions. The New Yorker has described her as ?one of the most successful woman composers of all time? and she is still in demand for commissions today.