ARLENE SIERRA
Composer, born in 1970 in Miami, Florida
Game of Attrition
Arlene Sierra grew up in Miami and New York and studied at Oberlin College-Conservatory, Yale University School of Music, and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. After initial composition lessons with Michael Daugherty, her principal teachers were Jacob Druckman and Martin Bresnick. She gained international recognition with her first score for large orchestra —
Aquilo — which won the 2001 Takemitsu Prize and was performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic, Susanna Mälkki conducting. Sierra has gone on to fulfill numerous international commissions, winning several fellowships and awards, most recently from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Based in London, she taught composition at Cambridge University in 2003–04 before her current appointment as lecturer in music composition at Cardiff University School of Music.
Arlene Sierra’s dramatic, vivid music is inspired by unusual sources including game theory, blueprints for ancient weapons, Darwinian evolution, and historical and mythical conflicts. This is music in and of the world, wrought with conviction and logic as well as an intricate sense of color and momentum. Movement is a continuing preoccupation that has grown out of Sierra’s lifelong interest in dance, a physicality of music through rhythm, syncopation, and kinetic energy. Early training in electroacoustic composition remains an influence as well, notably through the use of densely layered, flexible ostinato patterns and virtual samples from nature that feature in pieces including
Birds and Insects, The Art of Lightness, and
Colmena. A recent series of works, including
Surrounded Ground, Cicada Shell, and the new piano concerto,
Art of War, builds musical structures and motivic interactions from the military strategy of Sun Tzu — as an expression of protest against present-day conflicts and a plea for rationality and resolution. Natural forces of competition, evolution, and large-scale change, a modern sense of the pastoral as a source of scientific wonder and conscience rather than naive romanticism, have informed works, including
Colmena, Hearing Things, Aquilo, and the recent New York Philharmonic commission,
Game of Attrition.
Sierra studied with Magnus Lindberg at the Aldeburgh Festival in England and also Tanglewood. She says: “Having grown up attending the Philharmonic’s performances, it is a great honor and thrill to have the chance to write a commission for the New York Phil. I am delighted that this has been made possible by the excellent composer and teacher Magnus Lindberg, as part of a residency program that promises great things for new music in New York.”