Luna Pearl Woolf

“A brilliant, wrenching chamber work…flings us headfirst body and soul into the centre of towering virtuosity and pain that was and always will be du Pré…Jacqueline is a profoundly moving opera, one that shreds the emotions.”Opera Going Toronto

Canadian-American composer Luna Pearl Woolf has long used her creative voice to advocate for social and political change. Particularly renowned in the field of opera, her music, praised by The New York Times for its “psychological nuances and emotional depth,” is characterized by its dramatic intention, with a penetrating focus on music’s capacity as a storytelling language.

The 2021 GRAMMY-nominated composer-portrait album, LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood, spans several decades of the composer’s work and grapples with such pressing issues as climate change, poverty, zealotry, racism, gender roles and plague, through music that is as is intensely emotional as it is lyrical and complex. The album, released on the PENTATONE Oxingale Series, features The Choir of Trinity Wall Street, NOVUS NY and conductor Julian Wachner, with soloists cellist Matt Haimovitz, soprano Devon Guthrie, mezzo-soprano Elise Quagliata, and Broadway actor Nancy Anderson.

Tapestry Opera premiered Woolf’s Jacqueline, about legendary cellist Jacqueline du Pré, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek, in February 2020. The production garnered five nominations and a win in Toronto’s prestigious Dora Awards. Better Gods, about Hawaii’s Queen Lili‘uokalani, was premiered by Washington National Opera. The Pillar was awarded one of Opera America’s inaugural Discovery Grants for female composers. Current projects include The Limit of the Sun with librettist Andrea Stolowitz and City On Fire with librettist David Van Taylor.

Among Woolf’s most widely-performed works are Après moi, le déluge, written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; and Angel Heart, narrated by Jeremy Irons, recently released worldwide, alongside a new German-language edition with author Cornelia Funke narrating. Other noted collaborators include Dame Evelyn Glennie, Joyce DiDonato, the Brentano String Quartet, Dennis Russell Davies, and the Bruckner Orchestra, among many others.

Woolf founded the ground-breaking Oxingale Records with Haimovitz in 2000. Her music can be heard internationally on the PENTATONE Oxingale Series.

Black Tea Music handles promotion of select works and commissions for Luna Pearl Woolf.

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Spotlight

LUNA PEARL WOOLF: Fire and Flood [PENTATONE Oxingale Series] has been nominated for Best Classical Compendium in the 63rd GRAMMY Awards.

Featured Works

Angel Heart, a music storybook for narrator and five cellos
Better Gods, for six voices and chamber orchestra
Missa in Fines Orbis Terrae, for choir and organ
Jacqueline, an opera for soprano and cello with libretto by Royce Vavrek

Video


Better Gods for six voices and chamber orchestra (2015)
WNO: American Opera Initiative


Après moi, le déluge concerto for cello and SATB choir

 


The Pillar an opera in two acts
Washington Chorus

 


Jacqueline an opera
Tapestry Opera


Angel Heart a music storybook
Narrator: Jeremy Irons
Matt Haimovitz and Uccello
Lisa Delan, soprano
Frederica von Stade and Zheng Cao, mezzo-sopranos
Daniel Taylor, countertenor
Sanford Sylvan, baritone
Mike Marshall and Caterina Lichtenberg, mandolins
The Children’s Choir of St. Martin de Porres School, West Oakland, CA

Works Available for Purchase