CCM Presents
Jennifer Higdon Festival

Jennifer Higdon was born on New Year’s Eve, 1962 (Brooklyn, New York). She didn’t start playing an instrument until she taught herself to play the flute at the age of 15 and began formal studies at 18 when she entered college. Despite this late start, the Pulitzer Prize and three-time Grammy winner has become a major figure in classical music and is one of the few individuals in the U.S. who makes her living from commissions. Higdon averages 300 performances a year of her works, in many genres within classical music: from opera to chamber, symphonic to band, solo works to concerti. She has even written works in forms not tackled before: a bluegrass/classical hybrid concerto, a concerto for the entire low brass section of an orchestra (at the request of Maestro Ricardo Muti) and one that features 6 soloists (for Eighth Blackbird).

After receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto, Higdon also won a Grammy for her Percussion Concerto…a singular feat which no other classical composer has ever managed: two of the biggest major awards for two different pieces in one year. Additionally, she was awarded one of the largest and most prestigious composition prizes in the world, The Nemmers Prize in Music from Northwestern University. She has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship, two awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, the Koussevitzky Foundation Fellowship, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, an Independence Foundation Grant and funding from the NEA. A winner of the Van Cliburn Piano Competition’s American Composers Invitational, her Secret & Glass Gardens was performed by the semi-finalists in 2005. Her first opera, Cold Mountain, sold out its premiere run in Santa Fe, as well as in North Carolina, and Philadelphia (becoming the third highest selling opera in Opera Philadelphia’s history). 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.

Her music has been hailed by Fanfare Magazine as having “the distinction of being at once complex, sophisticated but readily accessible emotionally”, with the Times of London citing it as “…traditionally rooted, yet imbued with integrity and freshness.” The Chicago Sun Times recently cited her music as “both modern and timeless, complex and sophisticated, and immensely engaging in a way that both charms and galvanizes an audience craving something new and full of urgency, yet not distancing.” John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune called her writing, “beautiful, accessible, inventive, and impeccably crafted.”

Higdon's list of commissioners is extensive and includes The Philadelphia Orchestra, The Chicago Symphony, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Atlanta Symphony, the Munich Philharmonic and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well such groups as the Tokyo String Quartet, the Lark Quartet, Eighth Blackbird and the President’s Own United States Marine Band. She has also written works for such renowned artists as baritone Thomas Hampson and mezzo Sasha Cooke; pianists Yuja Wang and Gary Graffman; and violinists Joshua Bell, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Jennifer Koh and Hilary Hahn.

Her orchestral work, blue cathedral, is one of the most performed contemporary works in the orchestral repertoire and is widely considered the first work in the 21st century to have become part of the standard repertoire. Since its premiere in 2000, it has received over 850 performances. 

Higdon’s works have been recorded on more than 90 CDs. She has won Grammys for her Percussion Concerto, Viola Concerto and her Harp Concerto. Her work, All Things Majestic, written for the Grand Teton Music Festival, is part of that national park’s visitor center experience. The Library of Congress has added the recording of her Percussion Concerto to the National Recording Registry.

She was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Philosophical Society (founded by Benjamin Franklin).

For up-to-date information: jenniferhigdon.com