Julia Wolfe: Fire in My Mouth cover

Julia Wolfe: Fire in My Mouth

Composer
Released

A vivid choral rendering of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which 146 immigrant women died in a New York sweatshop accident.  Eschewing linear narrative, composer Julia Wolfe depicts this pivot point in American labor history primarily through the accumulation of fragmentary and repeated vocal lines. Where her Minimalist forbears used this kind of repetition for conceptual explorations in perception, consciousness, and spirituality, Wolfe instead uses it to build kinetic energy and dramatic tension.  The techniques bring the listener to the scene of the crime, nowhere more searingly than in the third movement, “Protest.”

Sean Wood

Recommended by

Suggestions
The Sacred Flame cover

The Sacred Flame

Cambridge Singers, John Rutter
The House of the Mind cover

The House of the Mind

Choir of the Queen's College, Oxford, Owen Rees, John Scott
Penderecki Conducts Penderecki, Vol. 2: Choral Music cover

Penderecki Conducts Penderecki, Vol. 2: Choral Music

Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, Krzysztof Penderecki
Vivaldi cover

Vivaldi

Thomas Dunford, Jupiter
Le Triomphe de l’amour cover

Le Triomphe de l’amour

Sandrine Piau, Les Paladins, Jerome Correas
Bob Chilcott: St. John Passion cover

Bob Chilcott: St. John Passion

Matthew Owens, Wells Cathedral Choir
Orlando Gibbons: With a Merrie Noyse: Second Service & Consort Anthems cover

Orlando Gibbons: With a Merrie Noyse: Second Service & Consort Anthems

Magdalen College Choir, Oxford, Fretwork, Grayston Ives
Distant Light cover

Distant Light

Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Sakari Oramo, Renée Fleming