Album review: Julia Wolfe, ‘Anthracite Fields’
Julia Wolfe’s Pulitzer Prize-winning oratorio “Anthracite Fields” is a thrillingly versatile tribute — by turns elegiac and celebratory, rambunctious and reflective — to the world of coal mining and miners in the composer’s home state of Pennsylvania.
The work’s five movements are scored for chorus (the superb Choir of Trinity Wall Street led by Julian Wachner) and instrumental sextet (the Bang on a Can All-Stars), and Wolfe uses those musical resources, along with a wealth of evocative found texts, to create a monument that is at once directly expressive and sociologically weighty.
The music encompasses everything from mournful minimalism to hard-driving rock ’n’ roll, yet there’s an underlying cohesiveness that ties that stylistic range together superbly. —
BANG ON A CAN ALL-STARS; CHOIR OF TRINITY WALL STREET