With a Blue dress on Drawing inspiration from folk, classical, and rock genres, Julia Wolfe's music brings a modern sensibility to each while simultaneously tearing down the walls between them. Wolfe's music is distinguished by an intense physicality and a relentless power that pushes performers to extremes and demands attention from the audience. In the words of The Wall Street Journal, Wolfe has "long inhabited a terrain of [her] own, a place where classical forms are recharged by the repetitive patterns of minimalism and the driving energy of rock." Julia Wolfe is co-founder of New York's music collective Bang on a Can. "My love affair with American folk music began in the 1980s when I lived, studied, and worked in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There I began to play mountain dulcimer, sing, and try out the bones. The folk scene was and still is very rich in Ann Arbor - and I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the culture. As I veered off into more experimental ideas in music the folk threads remained - references in such titles as Four Marys (my first string quartet), Cruel Sister (for string orchestra), and most recently Steel Hammer (an evening length art ballad for trio mediaeval and the Bang on a Can All-Stars). In this work for solo violin/voice and pre-recorded violins the folk roots come to the fore with fiddling licks, fragments of song, and bows deep into the string. I was inspired by a plaintive field recording of a woman singing "Pretty little girl with a blue dress on." Her tone was rough and her rhythm irregular. The timing and tempi, or implied tempi, in the piece plays on this irregularity and fluctuation, placing folk-like fragments into a kind of hyper state.” Met dank aan Monica Germino Heleen Hulst, Emma Breedveld, Isa Goldschmeding, Imogen Eve, Emma Rhebergen – viool Componiste Julia Wolfe, mede-oprichter van het New Yorkse Bang on a Can, beweegt zich tussen folk music, klassiek en rock. Ze vraagt daarbij vaak nogal wat van haar musici en het publiek. Ook in With a blue dress on voor 5 violen is het uitgangspunt een folk song. Maar timing en tempo, melodie en structuur worden vakkundig gedefragmenteerd en met behulp van repetitieve minimalpatronen opgezweept tot, zoals zij het zelf noemt, ‘a kind of hyper state’. Met speciale dank aan Monica Germino