Everything Band: Episode 103 - Jennifer Jolley

Composer Jennifer Jolley is on the faculty at Texas Tech University and Interlochen and is a member of ADJ*ective New Music and the Blue Dot Collective. In this episode she discusses her career, including how she got into writing for band.

Topics:

• Jennifer’s background and her current gig as a composition professor at Texas Tech University.
• Combining electronic music with band and how composers can best help teachers bring these types of works to life.
• How Jennifer got involved in writing music for band and the story of “And The Eyes of the World are Upon You” commissioned by Jerry Junkin and Kappa Kappa Psi.
• The Fail Blog.
• Jennifer’s thoughts about self-publishing and distributors and why that’s important for composers.
• The story of how Jennifer has recognized that her anxiety was in getting in the way of her happiness and the story of her decision to seek help.

Links:

• Jennifer Jolley
• Why I Compose, aka "The Fail Blog"
• Blue Dot Collective
• ADJective New Music
• Murphy Music Press
• Jolley: The Eyes of the World are Upon You
• Jolley: Ash
• Bach: Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor, BWV 1043
• Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
• Norman: Play: Level 1

Biography:

Composer Jennifer Jolley’s diverse catalog includes choral, orchestral, wind ensemble, chamber, and electronic works. She has been commissioned by ensembles and institutions across the United States, including the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, University of Texas at Austin, Bowling Green State University, Quince Contemporary Vocal Ensemble, The Canales Project, Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, among others. She is Assistant Professor of Composition at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas, is the co-founder of North American New Opera Workshop, and has written articles for the e-zine NewMusicBox.

In recent years, Jennifer has been increasingly drawn toward subjects that are political and even provocative. Her 2015 collaboration with librettist Kendall A, Prisoner of Conscience, sets to music statements made by the Russian punk-rock band Pussy Riot as they stood trial in Moscow for “hooliganism” and “religious hatred.” Quince Ensemble has performed the piece widely and has released a recording on their album Motherland with New Focus Recordings. Jennifer’s 2017 piece The Eyes of the World Are Upon You, commissioned by the University of Texas at Austin Wind Ensemble, reflects on the first-ever campus shooting in America, which took place at UT-Austin in 1966.

Jennifer’s blog—on which she has catalogued more than 100 rejection letters from competitions, festivals, and prizes—is widely read and admired by professional musicians. She is particularly passionate about this project as a composition teacher, and enjoys removing the taboo around “failure” for her students. In addition to her professorship at Texas Tech, she is a member of the composition faculty at Interlochen Arts Camp.

Jennifer deeply values the relationship that is created between composers and the communities with whom they collaborate. She has been composer-in-residence at Brevard College, University of Toledo, and the Vermont Symphony, and was in-residence at the Central Michigan University School of Music and the Alba Music Festival in Italy in 2018. She will be the Composer-in-Residence of the Women Composers Festival of Hartford in 2019.
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Jennifer Jolley took 2nd Place for the 2017–18 American Prize in Composition (Band/Wind Ensemble Division) and was a finalist for the the Symphony Number One Call for Scores. She holds degrees from the University of Southern California and the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, where her principal teachers included Stephen Hartke, Frank Ticheli, Michael Fiday, Joel Hoffman, and Douglas Knehans.