Joan Tower (born in 1938 in New Rochelle, New YOrk) is regarded as one of the most significant American composers, whose colourful and sharp-witted works gathered many awards. Her interest for rhythm and percussion, evident in her work, was sparked during her early formative years spent in South America. Back in the United States, she earned a bachelor’s degree in piano from Bennington College, Vermont and master’s and doctoral degrees at Columbia University, New York. As a pianist, she started composing during undergraduate studies. Heavily influenced by her mentors, her early compositional work was serial in conception. However, after the mid-70s she moved away from twelve-tone technique and toward traditional tonality. While modern in tonality and straightforward in its compositional structure, her music exhibits intensity and pulsing energy. Tower’s notable orchestral compositions include Sequoia, Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman created as a feminist response to Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, and the acclaimed Made in America which won a Grammy Award for the best classical contemporary composition. She also wrote concerto works for soloists and orchestra, covering nearly all of the standard string and woodwind instruments, often with a particular performer in mind. As a professor of composition at Bard College, Tower stated, “I am never going to stop composing, I don’t think.”

Rising was written for the flute virtuoso Carol Wincenc who gave the premiere with the Juilliard String Quartet in 2010 at Juilliard. While offering compelling flute solos, the piece remains balanced in content the music flows through ascending and descending elements; it goes up mostly as octatonic or chromatic scales, occasionally arpeggios, while tension and contrast are created by use of quicker rhythms, varying speed and dissonant harmony. Tower’s own words about this piece best express the ideas behind it: “I have always been interested in how music can go up. It is a simple action, but one that can have so many variables: slow or fast tempos, accelerating, slowing down, getting louder or softer – with thick or thin surrounding textures going in the same or opposite directions. For me, it is the context and the feel of the action that matters. A long climb, for example, might signal something important to come…A short climb, on the other hand, might be just a hop to another phrase. One can’t, however, just go up. There should be a counteracting action which is either going down or staying the same to provide a tension within the piece.”