Most of my music is about the energy of a group sound — how the interlocking of individuals creates a powerful human expression. Concertos in my mind have meant "flashy"...
I began to think about what could make the experience of the concerto special — how an individual voice could ride the wave of a large ensemble. I thought of the accordion. The accordion is friendly. Who has ever been intimidated by an accordion? It is a unique beast. It has "lived" in such great contexts...
The accordion's life has been primarily with the people — on the streets, in the wedding hall, and so forth. But one thing is for sure: the accordion is about love...
— Julia Wolfe
Forget about the accordion of basement cafes in Paris or Austrian firemen's barbecues. True Love has the claustrophobic, wraparound agitation of a dance party in the Midtown Tunnel. The soloist threads his way through dense orchestral traffic, giving off siren howls and gut-thrust chords.
There was, of course, no reason to expect that these works would be conventional concertos in the 18th- and 19th-century sense. Ms. Wolfe, for one, warned listeners in a program note that she was more interested in ensemble dynamics than in the traditional showiness of the concerto form.