American pianist, composer, and conductor

Joan Tower

Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist, and conductor. Her work has been performed worldwide. Since gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem that structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has written a variety of instrumental works, including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman—something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man—the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was the pianist and a founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.

Born

1938

September 6

Died

Living

Era

1930s

Country

—

About

Joan, in brief

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Life timeline

Key dates

1938 Born

Also on September 6

What else happened on this day, through history

394 Battle of the Frigidus: Roman emperor Theodosius I defeats and kills Eugenius the usurper. His Frankish magister militum Arbogast escapes but commits suicide two days later.
1492 Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time.
1522 The Victoria returns to Sanlúcar de Barrameda in Spain, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan's expedition and the first known ship to circumnavigate the world.
1620 The Pilgrims sail from Plymouth, England on the Mayflower to settle in North America. (Old Style date; September 16 per New Style date.)

See all of September 6 →

The world in 1938

When Joan arrived

april 18 Superman debuts in Action Comics #1 (cover dated June 1938).
april 25 U.S. Supreme Court delivers its opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and overturns a century of federal common law.
april 5 Spanish Civil War: Two days after the Nationalist army occupied the Catalan city of Lleida, dictator Francisco Franco decrees the abolition of the Generalitat (the autonomous government of Catalonia), the self-government granted by the Republic, and the official status of the Catalan language.
august 18 The Thousand Islands Bridge, connecting New York, United States, with Ontario, Canada, over the Saint Lawrence River, is dedicated by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Read the year 1938 →

Same-day contemporaries

Also born on September 6

Billy Rose 1899–1966 American composer and songwriter (born 1899) Christopher Brookmyre 1968– Scottish author Donna Haraway 1944– American author, academic, and activist Elvira Pagã 1920–2003 Brazilian vedette, singer, and artist (born 1920) Gilbert du Motier 1757–1834 Marquis de Lafayette, French general (born 1757) Isabelle Collin Dufresne 1935–2014 French actress (born 1935) Jane Addams 1860–1935 American activist and author, co-founded Hull House, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1860) Jessie Willcox Smith 1863–1935 American illustrator (born 1863) John Macleod 1876–1935 Scottish physician and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1876)

See everything on September 6 →

Same-year contemporaries

Also born in 1938

Alan Bond 1938–2015 English-Australian businessman (died 2015) Alberto Fujimori 1938–2024 Peruvian engineer, academic, and politician, President of Peru (died 2024) Andrew Clennel Palmer 1938–2019 British engineer (born 1938) Anthony Giddens 1938– English sociologist and academic Anthony James Leggett 1938– English-American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2026) Billy Shaw 1938–2024 American football player (died 2024) Caryl Churchill 1938– English-Canadian playwright Claudia Cardinale 1938– Italian actress (died 2025) Daniel Buren 1938– French sculptor and painter

Read about the year 1938 →

Keep going

More to explore

Joan's birthday September 6 Joan's zodiac Virgo When Joan arrived 1938