Joan Tower has been a towering figure of classical music for decades. A founding member of the influential Da Capo Chamber Players, as a composer she was the first woman to win the prestigious Grawemeyer Award for Music. This month's clip, featuring that long-time champion of American music, Leonard Slatkin, is from her energetic Concerto for Orchestra. In it, we find many of the stylistic tropes so common in late-20th and early 21st century compositions, especially for orchestra. (In this post-Stravinsky world, it sometimes seems like there is some unwritten law that the percussion section must include parts for temple blocks and tom toms, or at the very least xylophone and wood blocks, and there must be Sacre-esque tutti orchestral hits.) The excerpt here shows Tower's masterful orchestration skills, as well as virtuosic writing, especially for the winds and brass.