Jennifer Higdon

Jennifer Higdon ( born December 31, 1962 in Brooklyn, New York City ) is an American composer of classical music.

Life

Higdon was born in 1962 in Brooklyn and spent her childhood in Atlanta and Tennessee. She studied at Bowling Green State University Music and received flute lessons. Among her teachers was Robert Spano. Higdon earned a diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with David Loeb. At the University of Pennsylvania, she received the doctoral degree in composition.

After studying Higdon himself taught at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she held the Milton L. Skirt Chair. She worked as a composer with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 2005/2006 and the Green Bay Symphony Orchestra 2006/2007 and the Philadelphia Orchestra 2007/2008 together.

A wider audience, she was known by the published in 2010 in German Grammophon CD of Hilary Hahn, on which the exception soloist a composed work of Higdon, next to the famous violin concerto op 35 by Peter Tchaikovsky, played.

Works

• Concerto for Orchestra, 2002
• City Scape for Orchestra, 2002
• Violin Concerto ( Dedicated to Hilary Hahn )

Prizes and Awards (selection)

• Grammy Awards 2008, Nomination for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for Zaka Eighth Blackbird
• Grammy Awards 2010 award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for her Percussion Concerto.
• 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto, which was premiered on February 6, 2009 in Indianapolis and was recorded by Hilary Hahn 2010.