World Premiere: New Works by Danielle Jagelski and JL Marlor

An enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe, composer Danielle Jagelski often collaborates and performs with other Indigenous and Native American artists. She is passionate about kinship building and decolonization through interdisciplinary projects. JL Marlor is a multidisciplinary artist, composer, electric guitarist, songwriter, and educator whose work blurs the boundaries between the personal and political, the collective and individual, and the classical and contemporary.

As part of Recomposing America, ACF has commissioned new works from Danielle and JL for Protestra, an NYC-based activist orchestra that bridges the divide between advocacy and classical music. The new orchestral works will highlight the concepts of girlhood and womanhood as they relate to the history and future of America.

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About the Commissions:

Matriarch by Danielle Jagelski honors the knowledge systems created and sustained by the enduring wisdom of female leadership. These systems honor a diversity of abilities, roles, and ways of knowing. They resist binaries of any kind and instead center the sacredness of kinship. Within these frameworks, the goal is not just “survival,” but to thrive in ways that keep a community healthy — through nourishment, connection, artistry, and innovation. A care that extends to all generations to come.

YELLFIRE is a single-movement orchestral work by JL Marlor exploring women’s rage and the ways girls are taught to swallow anger, frustration, and intensity rather than express it outwardly. The piece moves through a series of volatile and contrasting sound worlds that trace how suppressed emotion is redirected inward, often manifesting as control, thinness, silence, or self-erasure. It culminates in a final section for voice and electric guitar, as Marlor joins the orchestra, merging personal voice with orchestral force.

Recomposing America is a multi-year initiative led by American Composers Forum that highlights artistic perspectives unique to the United States and the broader Americas through direct commissions, institutional collaborations, and public dialogue. Timed with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Recomposing America aims to refresh and reimagine the “who,” “what,” and “why” of the United States, and the stories therein.