Higdon won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto (Lawdon Press), which premiered February 6, 2009, in Indianapolis. chamber music, Kammermusik [G], musique de chambre [F], musica da camera [I], musica cameralis [L] "Classical Music" for a small ensemble, generally 8 or fewer players with a canonical emphasis on 3-6 players. The good news is that the different voices can be heard without drowning one another out, which is one of the exciting things about this piece. Higdon's list of commissioners is extensive and includes The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony, The Atlanta Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Minnesota Orchestra, The Pittsburgh Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well such groups as the Tokyo String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, and the President's Own Marine Band. Tracklist: Jennifer Higdon (b.1962) 01. Violin Concerto. New Releases. Rene Orth's "10 Days in a Madhouse" will be given its world premiere on Sept. 21 in the opening of the company's O23 Festival, and Jennifer Higdon's "Woman with Eyes Closed" has been . Chacconi [0:12:17.52] 03. Glance through the Upcoming Performances page of her official website and youll find that her work is being played not only by the Houston Symphony and Philadelphia Orchestra, but also by municipal, community, and high school ensembles across the country. [6] She also often uses scalar passages to add melodic or harmonic context to the music. But Jennifer Higdon came to classical music later than most composers. Jennifer Elaine Higdon (born December 31, 1962[1]) is an American composer of contemporary classical music. The piece stands as a major contribution to the violin concerto repertoire and, although it is . And her champions include top-tier soloists, ensembles and orchestras. Jennifer Higdon : James Button, oboe Giancarlo Guerrero / Nashville Symphony : Naxos 8.559823 : Buy 10:14 pm : The Dharma at Big Sur : John Adams : Tracy Silverman, electric violin John Adams / BBC Symphony Orchestra : Nonesuch 79857 : Buy 10:02 pm : Les Moutons de Panurge : Frederic Rzewski : Eighth Blackbird : Cedille 84 : Buy Lets start with melody, and the understanding that her music is not, in fact, chock-a-block with hummable tunes (though she certainly knows how to write those). Fly Forward [0:05:18.40] Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) 04. Violin Concerto: III - Jennifer Higdon 4. Jennifer Higdon: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra I. Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto was completed in August of 2008 and premiered 6 February 2009 by the work's dedicatee, Hilary Hahn, with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (co-commissioner) and Mario Venzago, serving as conductor. 2023 Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Besides Hahn, the concerto was commissioned by four orchestras: The Baltimore, Toronto and Indianapolis Symphonies, plus the orchestra at the Curtis Institute. Despite these challenges, she established herself as a hard worker and a resilient student, even when she faced discouragement from some professors.[7]. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The premiere recording of Jennifer Higdon's Pulitzer Prize-winning Violin Concerto, set for release this week, is a happy development on just about every front. Shortly after the release of this CD, Jennifer Higdon and Hilary Hahn were featured on the PBS News . The first movement of this concerto, written for the violinist, Hilary Hahn, carries a somewhat enigmatic title of 1726. This number represents an important aspect of such a journey of discovery, for both the composer and the soloist. A perfect example, Higdon says, is the concerto's first movement, titled "1726" (the street address of Curtis). At 15, she happened upon her mothers old flute and, with the help of a method book, taught herself. College of Music (degree granting department) Please see the Use and Reproduction field in this objects record below for more information about re-use of this item. 2023 GRAMMY WINNER! Higdon wrote it expressly for Hahn, keeping in mind the kind of playing she likes and the composer frequently consulted the soloist, as is frequently the case with compositions of this genre. 35 4 Karol Szymanowski Violin Concerto 1916 Play 15. Higdons intimate side. "It was a leap of inspiration," she said. "[citation needed], Among less favorable assessments, Andrew Clements in the Guardian gave a CD of Higdon's music a minimal one-star rating. The person presiding at the pre-concert forum wondered if Hahn would play from memory or from a score but, having (last spring in Milwaukee) asked Hahn if she had the score in hand and how long it would take her to learn it. The piece stands as a major contribution to the violin concerto repertoire and, although it is impossible to predict so early into the twenty-first century, has the makings of becoming a landmark work for the instrument. [7] It was not until high school that she joined concert band, where she began playing percussion. Zaka (2003), Higdons sonically playful and imaginative piece for the new music ensemble Eighth Blackbird, is especially delightful in this regard, as is her Percussion Concerto (2005), written for Colin Currie. Indeed, the climaxes are carefully placed, not just within the individual movements but in the work as a whole, which forms a shapely and satisfying dramatic arc. Her early background in percussion likely influenced her rhythmic style; her music often features complex, intricate rhythmic passages, even when melodies are lyrical. Missoula Symphony Assn. On the occasions where she has set non-English texts, she tends to use both the text and translation in the piece, allowing the piece to more effectively communicate its message. All Rights Reserved. Appendix: Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto Instrumentation . And I have a tendency to make musical events happen or turn over fast. She has explained her philosophy partly as a reaction to the anything-goes happenings she experienced through her fathers artistic interests, her grounding in the steady rhythms of popular music, and also the dogged determination she felt she needed in order to make up for her own late start. The second movement, entitled 'Chaconni', has a pastoral feel, vaguely reminiscent of Vaughan Williams but with the lark ascending into a more unsettled sky. She was born in Brooklyn, though her parents moved to Atlanta soon thereafter, and then to a farm in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. Composer Jennifer Higdon has won the Pulitzer Prize for music for her Violin Concerto, making her one of the few women to have won the countrys top classical music prize. The concerto was co . Higdon has been a featured composer at festivals including Grand Teton, Tanglewood, Vail, Norfolk, Winnipeg and Cabrillo. Ones never really sure what might come next, though at the same time, the various ideas are woven together expertly theres a strong feeling of structural integrity. (I rather hope she will re-name the movement.) The postmodern approach that mixes styles from the nineteenth century with contemporary ones is called: neo-Romanticism. Jennifer Higdon is one of America's most acclaimed and most frequently performed living composers. As she put it to the Los Angeles Times, You dont need a PhD to understand my pieces. Whats intriguing, at least to me, is how unconventional the music is under its generally conventional surface. a carbonhouse experience. Her style grew out of her musical upbringing, which was characterized by much greater and earlier exposure to popular music such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, and many other groups, rather than to classical music. Many of her works begin with a sparse orchestration, and build in performing forces as a piece continues, creating variety and interest throughout a given piece of music. Jennifer Higdon is one of America's most acclaimed and most frequently performed living composers. Gregory Sauer, Professor Directing Treatise; Denise Von Glahn, University Representative; Alexander Jimnez, Committee Member. Sea and more. Listen to music by Jennifer Higdon on Apple Music. "I'm going to attend my students' composition concert tonight at Curtis and try not to steal any of their thunder," she says. In her vocal and choral works, Higdon works to emulate speech patterns and applies them to writing both the pitch and the rhythm of her melodies. He said that did this with the orchestra that Schumann himself had conducted in Dusseldorf, which is used to steady tempos and he did not know whether this would provoke outrage and they actually liked it enough to ask him to be their "Schumann" conductor. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page. | Many of Jennifer Higdon's pieces are considered neoromantic. Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto: The Genesis of a Twenty-First Century Work, Williams, Max Brenton Harkey (author) Sauer, Gregory (professor directing treatise) The opening of the concerto uses harmonics, a technique Higdon heard while listening to Hahn's recording of the Violin Concerto by Arnold Schoenberg. Higdon makes her living from commissions and her music is . [1] It was composed for the violinist Hilary Hahn and was given its world premiere by Hahn and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Mario Venzago on February 6, 2009. The Mannes Orchestra, led by Mannes Director of Orchestral and Conducting Studies David Hayes, returns to Alice Tully Hall in a concert featuring a symphonic world premiere by Adolphus Hailstork, a New York premiere by Zhou Tian, a New York premiere by Jennifer Higdon featuring CoPA . [1] It is available for streaming on Amazon Music and Apple Music. The dynamics range from very soft to overwhelming at a couple of moments, the tuttis giving the soloist some surely much needed rest. Her works represent a wide range of genres, from orchestral to chamber, to wind ensemble, as well as vocal, choral and opera. JENNIFER HIGDON - Violin Concerto (2008) A common fear with contemporary music is that it will fall victim to an air of exclusivity or affectation. "I realized I was working on this when we were approaching the Olympics," she says. Vasily. This article originally appeared in the June 2015 issue of Gramophone. For a composer, this thrill often takes place in the writing of a concerto it is the exploration of an instruments world, a journey of the imagination, confronting and stretching an instruments limits, and discovering a particular performers gifts. This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. This is Higdons runaway hit; since its premiere at Curtis in 2000, it has been performed more than 500 times. In the latter work, Higdon goes to great lengths to provide the soloist with long stretches of soft, melodic music (mostly for vibraphone and marimba) which acts as a welcome foil for the obligatory, drum-heavy fireworks one (rightly) expects in a percussion extravaganza. Christina L. Reitz, "Jennifer Higdon", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). For details on how we use cookies, see our. This song sets a text by Walt Whitman, from When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. Spiral bound score, 14 p. . Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral is a tone poem Jennifer Higdon's blue cathedral utilizes the instruments from a typical Baroque orchestra. During her time at Bowling Green, she wrote her first composition, a two-minute piece for flute and piano named Night Creatures. She has also written works for such artists as baritone Thomas Hampson, pianists Yuja Wang and Gary Graffman, violinists Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Jennifer Koh and Hilary Hahn. Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto was completed in August of 2008 and premiered 6 February 2009 by the work's dedicatee, Hilary Hahn, with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra (co-commissioner) and Mario Venzago, serving as conductor. Toccata - Walter Piston 5. Her first opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016; the first American opera to do so in the award's history. Higdon has become something of a concerto specialist over the past decade, producing works for oboe (2005, later adapted for soprano saxophone), a bluegrass trio (the Concerto 4-3 from 2007), and piano (2009). Some of her rhythmic and melodic repetition could be considered minimalist in nature. Her works have been recorded on more than four dozen CDs. The mood of the work was more lyrical than not. Jennifer Higdon's myriad accolades and accomplishments are impressive by any standard, but particularly in the world of contemporary classical music. The first is enigmatically denoted "1726," a number Higdon says has meaning to both her and Hahn and she has promised an autographed copy of the score to the first six respondents correctly guessing what this significance is. Higdon sets Jeanne Minahans emotionally layered poems so that every word can be understood; occasionally one senses its the violin and orchestra who are singing, not the choir. Pulitzer Prize and three-time Grammy-winner Jennifer Higdon (b. Brooklyn, NY, December 31, 1962) taught herself to play flute at the age of 15 and began formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. As a result, she has described her own compositional process as "intuitive" and "instinctive", where she favors music that makes sense, rather than writing music that adheres to classical forms and structures. Jennifer Higdon's musical background has influenced her in many unique ways. "It's the extremes," Higdon says. The piece, recorded by Hahn and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, is slated for a September 2010 release . A major figure in contemporary classical music, she received the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018 Grammy for her Viola Concerto, and . The concerto has a duration of roughly 33 minutes and is composed in three movements: The work is scored for a solo violin and an orchestra comprising two flutes (2nd doubling piccolo), two oboes (2nd doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, two percussionists, and strings. Higdon's new string quartet is thematically connected to her award-winning opera Cold Mountain. [1] It was composed for the violinist Hilary Hahn and was given its world premiere by Hahn and . The music tells of some of the majestic parks in America: MA Music, Leisure and Travel She tries to reflect the mood of the text, which results in melodies that tend to have a more romantic sound. [15] "Higdon's music is lithe and expert", wrote Robert Battey of the Washington Post. It was co-commissioned by The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia and premiered in Santa Fe in 2015.[12]. Jennifer Higdon started late in music, teaching herself to play flute at the age of 15 and then beginning formal musical studies at 18, with an even later start in composition at the age of 21. She is a major figure in contemporary classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto, and Grammy Awards for the recordings of her Percussion Concerto (2010), Viola Concerto (2018), and Harp Concerto (2020). You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. 44, no. The Trios second movement, Fiery Red, gives us the flip side; here, both the motivically terse and discursive elements work together to ignite an almost unrelenting rush of nervous energy. String Poetic: Nocturne. Find top songs and albums by Jennifer Higdon, including Barcarole (Seven Mad Gods Who Rule the Sea): III. Allegro moderato [0:19:22.71] 05. 2 Flutes (Piccolo doubling) 2 Oboes (English horn in F doubling) 2 Bb . Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto: The Genesis of a Twenty-First Century Work. The Piano Trio demonstrates her gift for tender melody. 3 and Julia Wolfes Steel Hammer.. Additionally, a biographical sketch of the composer as well as all known influences on the Concerto are discussed. Pulitzer Prize- and three-time Grammy Award-winning composer Jennifer Higdon is one of America's most frequently performed living composers. The cats names, for the record, are Beau and Squeak. http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/. Her earliest compositions date to the early '80s, but she emerged as an important figure in the period of the new millennium with such orchestra works as blue cathedral (1999), City Scape (2002), and Concerto for Orchestra (2002). Composer: Jennifer Higdon Soloists: Jennifer Koh - violin , Reiko Uchida - piano Cedille 103. [13] Her most popular work is blue cathedral, a one-movement tone poem which she wrote in memory of her brother, who died of cancer in 1998. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. Gramophone is part of From 1994 to 2021, Higdon was a professor of composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she held the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies. Violin Concerto No. Hear An Excerpt From The Winning Composition, Composer Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto is this year's Pultizer Prize winner for music. Conductors who worked extensively with her include Christoph Eschenbach, Marin Alsop, Leonard Slatkin, and Giancarlo Guerrero. Orders can be placed by going to the Works/Orchestral section. Winner for music her music is under its generally conventional surface Von Glahn, University Representative ; Alexander Jimnez Committee... At Curtis in 2000, It has been performed more than four dozen CDs her living commissions. 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jennifer higdon violin