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Julia Wolfe’s music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. Taken together, her recent evening-length works have focused on aspects of American labor history and have been lauded as some of the most important and searing works of our time. From the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire to the myth of John Henry to the lives of coal miners, Wolfe’s Fire in my mouth, Steel Hammer and Anthracite Fields have led to the receipt of a MacArthur grant and a Pulitzer Prize in music, among many other citations. She co-founded Bang on a Can and is on the faculty at NYU’s Steinhardt School. juliawolfemusic.com