In the Studio with Julia Wolfe

How does a living composer spend their workday?

You may recognize contemporary composer Julia Wolfe as one of the founding members of performance collective @bangonacanland, or maybe you know her as musical wolf on @PBSKIDS's Arthur. To composer Shelley Washington, she will always be a mentor, teacher, and friend. In this episode of "In the Studio," you're in for a musicological treat. Take a deep dramaturgical dive with host Shelley into Wolfe's 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning Anthracite Fields, which draws on oral histories, interviews, speeches, and more to depict the history of labor and hardship in the Pennsylvania Anthracite Coal Region. You'll learn more about the making of Fire in My Mouth (2019), which also explores American labor history, by telling the story of immigrant women in New York’s garment industry at the turn of the century.

In this three-part series, 2023 WQXR Artist Propulsion Lab member Shelley Washington explores the spaces where contemporary composers work. Speaking to her former teacher, Julia Wolfe, and current composing student Kailyn Williams, they converse about how we can all learn from each other.

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Produced by Shelley Washington, Max Fine, and Aimée Buchanan