by Mike Telin
TODAY’S ALMANAC:
Today we celebrate the 95th birthday of Franco-American composer Betsy Jolas. Born in Paris, her mother was a translator and singer, her father a poet and journalist and the founder of the magazine transition. Along with her family, Jolis settled in the United States in late 1940.
While living in the States, she studied music at Bennington, but upon returning to Paris in 1946 she continued her studies at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, where she was a student of Darius Milhaud and Olivier Messiaen. Jolis served as Messiaen’s assistant at the Conservatoire from 1971 to 1974, and was appointed to the faculty in 1975.
An active composer since 1945, her output includes Opera, works for Orchestra and solo works with orchestra or ensemble, pieces for large ensemble, chamber music, and choral and vocal works which have been performed by Kent Nagano, Anssi Karttunen, William Christie, Håkan Hardenberger, and Sir Simon Rattle, as well as the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre de Paris, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra.
Jolas also has amassed a collection of awards from the Copley Foundation of Chicago, ORTF, the American Academy of Arts, the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Grand Prix National de la Musique, Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris, and the Grand Prix de la SACEM (Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique).
In 1983 she became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and has held teaching positions at Yale, Harvard, Mills College, Berkeley, USC and San Diego University, Tanglewood, and the University of Michigan.
In recent years, her career has enjoyed a resurgence after she was “rediscovered” by Sir Simon Rattle. Click here to listen to a thoroughly engaging conversation with Berlin Philharmonic hornist Fergus McWilliam.
Click here for a performance of A Little Summer Suite (2015) and here for Letters from Bachville for orchestra (2019). Both performances are by the Boston Symphony under the direction of Andris Nelsons.
