Julia Adolphe

Born: May 16, 1988, New York, New York

Underneath the Sheen

• Composed: 2018
  
• Premiere: September 27, 2018 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Walt Disney Concert Hall, Gustavo Dudamel conducting
  
• CSO Notable Performances: These are the first CSO performances of Underneath the Sheen.
• Instrumentation: 2 flutes (incl. alto flute, piccolo), 2 oboes (incl. English horn), 2 clarinets (incl. bass clarinet), 2 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, crotales, maracas, marimba, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, tambour de Basque, temple blocks, tom-tom, vibraphone, harp, piano, strings
• Duration: approx. 8 minutes

Julia Adolphe’s music is performed across the U.S. and abroad by renowned orchestras and ensembles such as the Los Angeles and New York philharmonics; the Boston, Cincinnati and BBC symphony orchestras; Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Orchestre Métropolitain, Minnesota Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, the Sitkovetsky Trio, the Norwegian and Los Angeles chamber orchestras and the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, as well as soprano Hila Plitmann and pianist Gloria Cheng, among others. Adolphe’s awards include a Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, an OPERA America Discovery Grant, an ASCAP Young Composer Award and a Charles Ives Scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. 

A native New Yorker living in Nashville, Adolphe holds a Master of Music degree in music composition from the USC Thornton School of Music and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Cornell University, where she studied with Steven Stucky and Stephen Hartke.

Recent commissions include Chrysalis, a cello concerto for Seth Parker Woods and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and a large-scale choral work with celebrated poet Safiya Sinclair, to be announced. Other works include the violin concerto Woven Loom, Silver Spindle, also commissioned by the LA Philharmonic for Martin Chalifour; the orchestral work Makeshift Castle (2023), co-commissioned by the Boston Symphony and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig; Adolphe’s chorus and orchestra piece Crown of Hummingbirds (2023), a collaboration with Safiya Sinclair and commissioned by the Cincinnati May Festival; and her piano trio Etched in Smoke and Light, commissioned by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, The Soraya and Arizona Friends of Chamber Music for the Sitkovetsky Trio.

Passionate about de-stigmatizing mental illness and dispelling the myth of the tortured artist, Adolphe is the creator and host of the podcast LooseLeaf NoteBook. juliaadolphe.com

Of Underneath the Sheen, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, Adolphe wrote:

Underneath the Sheen envisions the movement of light edging and shining through a canopy of leaves and branches as observed from the forest floor. The endurance and quiet omnipotence of California’s Redwood trees served as the source of inspiration. Standing beneath these trees is a humbling and exhilarating experience, a stunning reminder of the simultaneous power and fragility of nature. The immense roots, twisting and turning, the mist hanging in the air, and the beams of light entering the forest ceiling create a striking enclosure, encasing the observer in an otherworldly realm. The music explores this oddly foreign yet deeply intimate atmosphere, a sense of a lost home, a state of vulnerability.