HIGDON, JENNIFER (b 1962 )
Jennifer Higdon (b.1962) started late in music, teaching herself to
play the flute at the age of fifteen and then beginning
formal musical studies at eighteen, with an even later
start in composition at the age of 21. Despite this late
start, she has become a major figure in...
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Jennifer Higdon (b.1962) started late in music, teaching herself to
play the flute at the age of fifteen and then beginning
formal musical studies at eighteen, with an even later
start in composition at the age of 21. Despite this late
start, she has become a major figure in contemporary
classical music and is able to make her living from
commissions and on average completes between five
and ten pieces a year. These works run the range of
genres from orchestral to chamber, and from choral to
vocal. She is the recipient of many awards, including a
Pew Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship and two
awards from the American Academy of Arts and
Letters. In the summer of 2003 she was the first woman
to be a featured composer at the Tanglewood
Contemporary Music Festival. The 2005 Van Cliburn
Competition also featured her work, Secret and Glass
Gardens as part of its semi-final rounds. Her
commissions have included works for such major
groups as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta
Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the Indianapolis
Symphony, National Symphony, the Pittsburgh
Symphony, and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; for the
new music ensemble, eighth blackbird, the Tokyo String
Quartet, the Ying Quartet, and the Lark Quartet; and for
such soloists as Colin Currie, Gary Graffman and Lang
Lang. Jennifer Higdon’s works enjoy more than one
hundred performances annually. Her orchestral work,
blue cathedral, has become one of the most performed
contemporary orchestral works in the United States. Her
music appeals to a wide-ranging audience in both
classical experience and age. Matt Groening, creator of
the popular The Simpsons series, singled out her disc,
the Grammy-award winning Higdon: Concerto for
Orchestra/City Scape, as one of his top-ten favorites of
2004. She is on the composition faculty at the Curtis
Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
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