Joelle Wallach
Born: June 29, 1946, New York, New York
BIOGRAPHY MUSIC RECORDINGS SOURCES
Jewish-American composer, Joelle Wallach, spent the first five years of her childhood in Morocco before returning to New York City, where she was born. She began formal musical training at the Juilliard Preparatory Division studying piano, voice, theory, bassoon, and violin. She later obtained a Bachelor’s degree in composition from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master of Arts degree at Columbia University. She culminated her studies in 1984 with a DMA in composition from the Manhattan School of Music where she studied with John Corigliano. She was the first person to earn this degree there. Wallach has earned many prestigious grants, awards, and honors throughout her career as well as a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1997 for her string quartet (1995).
Wallach’s output includes many works for voice as well as music for chamber ensemble, orchestra, and choirs. Her music is deeply influenced by her years in Morocco and her compositions reflect that exoticism through non-western rhythm and scales. Her one-act chamber opera, The King’s 12 Moons, written in 1989, combines chamber orchestra, mime, and children’s chorus to depict a Grimm brothers’ folktale about tyranny.
Wallach, committed to addressing 21st century world issues, chooses to compose works that allow her to collaborate with contemporary poets. The New York Choral Society commissioned Wallach to write Toward a Time of Renewal, a secular oratorio for orchestra, chorus, and solo, for the 150th anniversary of Carnegie Hall using the text of Denise Levertov. Who is that Stranger?, a six-song set, is based on the poetry and texts by anonymous, illiterate women of Yemen and the West Bank. When Lost in the Forest is written for a cappella chorus about the “Pacific Northwest Indigenous people’s reliance on the wisdom of nature.” It is also arranged for solo voice. Wallach’s Jewish background has also influenced her writing, and she has composed sacred works using Hebrew chant.
A lecturer for pre-concerts at the New York Philharmonic, Wallach previously held a Visiting Professor of Composition position at the College of Music of the University of North Texas.