Joan Tower is an contemporary American composer. She became known for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia, a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant redwood from trunk to needles. Among her other prominent pieces are the Fanfares for the Uncommon Woman, which are something of a response to Aaron Copland's ''Fanfare for the Common Man]], her two string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems.
Tower's style is of the 20th Century, and the 21st. The rhythm and melodic flow of her music are very flexible, not limited by tonality or time signature, and her orchestration encompasses a wide range of tone colors. She teaches that the best pieces are the ones that are not "safe" in terms of sitting within a key or meter or standard group of instruments.
Tower's writing is exclusively instrumental. She has expressed no intention to compose using vocalists or extramusical texts, noting that she simply does not feel that words are required to express anything in music.
