reviews_and_ramblings | Cheryl Lawson & Jennifer Higdon

Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music. She has received many awards including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto. Higdon lives with her partner Cheryl Lawson in Philadelphia. They met in high school.

Higdon was born in Brooklyn, but spent her first 10 years in Atlanta, Georgia, before moving to Tennessee. A largely self-taught flautist, she played in her high school's concert band and heard little classical music before her college years. She studied at Bowling Green State University and majored in flute performance. Of playing in the university orchestra, she has said: "Because I came to classical music very differently than most people, the newer stuff had more appeal for me than the older." While at Bowling Green she met Robert Spano, who was teaching a conducting course there and who became one of the champions of Higdon's music in the American orchestral community. Although Higdon's music has been performed by more than 150 conductors, those who have worked extensively with Higdon include Christoph Eschenbach, Marin Alsop, Leonard Slatkin, and Giancarlo Guerrero. Higdon earned an Artist's Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with David Loeb and taught virtuoso Hilary Hahn. She then obtained a master's degree and doctoral degree in composition from the University of Pennsylvania under the tutelage of George Crumb.

@Flute Arts: Bentley Retirement Reunion, May 4, 2002
Jennifer Higdon is an American composer of classical music. She has received many awards including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto. Higdon lives with her partner Cheryl Lawson in Philadelphia. They met in high school. Higdon is currently writing an opera based on Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain". It is co-commissioned by Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia.

Higdon teaches composition at the Curtis Institute where she holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies. She has served as Composer-in-Residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Fort Worth Symphony. Her musical style uses elements of traditional tonality and emphasizes interesting color combinations. Higdon has received commissions from major symphonies including the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Atlanta Symphony, the National Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, and the Dallas Symphony. blue cathedral, a one-movement tone poem dealing with the death of her brother from cancer, has quickly became one of the most performed modern orchestral works by a living American composer. It has been performed by more than 400 orchestras since its premiere in 2000. Her works have been recorded on more than four dozen CDs.

Higdon is currently writing an opera based on Charles Frazier's "Cold Mountain". It is co-commissioned by Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia and is scheduled to be premiered in Santa Fe in 2015.

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Higdon

Further Readings:

Composing Thoughts: Great Starts by John Clare
Publisher: John Nasukaluk Clare; 1 edition (November 19, 2013)
Amazon Kindle: Composing Thoughts: Great Starts

How did the maestros get their start? Living composers are really like the old ones - they all have a blank page. But how do they know they were a composer, or wanted to create sounds. Now read behind the scenes interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning composers like Jennifer Higdon, Steve Reich, John Corigliano, and George Crumb. Composing Thoughts: Great Starts showcases the beginnings with interviewer John Clare.

More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance

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