LA Phil Store

Pianist/composer Conrad Tao's album American Rage features works by Frederic Rzewski, Julia Wolfe, and Aaron Copland, and explores the roots of rebellion from the 1930s Harlan County labor disputes, through the trauma of 9/11, to the deep divisions of the present day. Bookended by two expansive works by Frederic Rzewski Which Side Are You On?, based on Florence Reece’s 1931 protest song, and Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues, an industrial folk song that sardonically reflects on unjust factory working conditions - the album centers on Julia Wolfe's Compassion, written in the wake of 9/11, and Aaron Copland's elegiac Piano Sonata.