Profile: Joanne Metcalf
Composer Joanne Metcalf, assistant professor of music, recently was the recipient of an American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers award that cited “the unique prestige value of her catalog of original compositions.”
ASCAP put it mildly. Professor Metcalf’s compositions have been performed and broadcast in more than 20 countries, and she has received commissions from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Scottish Arts Council, Cappella Nova, the Netherlands–America Foundation, Ensemble Hex, English tenor John Potter, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Trio Medieval in Norway, and marimbist Nancy Zeltsman. The latter work, Floating and Grooving, was premiered during the Zeltsman Marimba Festival on the Lawrence campus this past summer, for which the composer was a guest lecturer.
In addition, the string orchestra version of her Doom-begotten Music will have its premiere by the Lawrence Chamber Orchestra in January (the piano-vocal version was introduced at the York Festival of Contemporary Music in 2002), and The waters of speech are silent will have its world premiere by the Lawrence University Wind Ensemble in May. Il nome del bel fior has received over 85 performances worldwide and was featured in the German television documentary Wenn Engel singen: Das Hilliard Ensemble.
She has received awards from the International Association of Women in Music, the American Music Center, Duke University, and in 2001 from Copland House, under which she lived and worked in Aaron Copland’s former home near New York City.
The highlight of her teaching experience at Lawrence — so far — was last year’s Project One: Saxophones and Voices, in which she and several of her advanced composition students worked closely with the conservatory’s voice and saxophone studios to compose new works for solo voice and saxophone quartet. The result was a recital of six expertly performed world premieres, a radio broadcast, and the Lawrence Songbook.
“The students really held their own working side-by-side with two professional composers — myself and guest Christopher Adler,” she says, “and it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.”