2014 marks Jennifer Higdon’s sixth residency at the Cabrillo Festival. A Pulitzer Prize and GRAMMY Award-winner whose works garner more than 300 performances a year, Higdon is now one of the most performed living American composers working today. She has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Koussevitzky Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her Secret & Glass Gardens was a winner in the Van Cliburn Piano Competition’s American Composers Invitational.
Higdon’s commissions have come from a wide range of performers: from such orchestras as the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra, to The President’s Own Marine Band; from the Tokyo String Quartet and the Lark Quartet, to the new music ensemble, eighth blackbird; as well as individual artists such as violinists Hilary Hahn and Jennifer Koh, and pianists Gary Graffman and Yuja Wang. She recently completed her first opera based on Charles Frazier’s book, Cold Mountain. It will be premiered in August 2015 at Santa Fe Opera and then will be presented by Opera Philadelphia in February 2016.
Upcoming projects include a Viola Concerto for Roberto Diaz, commissioned by the Library of Congress; a song cycle for Thomas Hampson, commissioned by Carnegie Hall; and a work for Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg’s New Century Chamber Orchestra. Higdon makes her living from commissions and serves as composer-in-residence with various orchestras and universities throughout the country. Her works are recorded on over 50 CDs. ESPN has broadcast her music during Drum Corp International’s World Finals, when the Boston Crusaders and the Bluecoats featured her music in their shows. She holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
Higdon’s work Concerto 4-3 will be performed by the Festival Orchestra on Saturday, August 2, at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium.
Visit Jennifer Higdon’s website.
