Betsy Jolas

Composer Betsy Jolas remains active in her nineties and calls herself the last survivor of the generation of Stockhausen and Boulez. Her compositional career has been unbroken since about 1945, and she has also been active as an educator. Elizabeth "Betsy" Jolas was born in Paris on August 5, 1926. In New York, she joined the Dessoff Choirs, where she was exposed to Renaissance music that became an influence. Jolas became a follower of Boulez's Domaine musicale concert series in the early '60s, and her music mostly used a serialist idiom, but she had her own take on the style. Jolas' works have been performed by such ensembles as Boulez's Ensemble InterContemporain, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Orchestre de Paris, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She had a new work premiered by the Orchestre de Paris in 2022 and headlined the Les Volques festival in Nîmes, France, that year.