Jennifer Higdon is composer-in-residence at Eastman School of Music’s Women in Music Festival this week, “A celebration of women involved in all aspects of music, including composition, performance, teaching, scholarship, and administration.” Now in its 10th year, the festival features works of historical and living women composers through completely free concerts performed by Eastman groups as well as guest artists.
In 2010, Higdon won the Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto as well as the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical composition for her work Percussion Concerto. Her works have been featured on numerous Grammy-winning albums. Her most recent releases include a CD of string music by the Serafin Quartet (2013), works performed by Gary Graffman and the Lark Quartet (2013), and the symphonic band version of Higdon’s Soprano Sax Concerto (2012). She is presently writing an opera based on Charles Frazier’s book Cold Mountain, scheduled to be premiered in 2015 by Santa Fe Opera.
Dr. Higdon currently holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition Studies at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia.
“There are a lot of women composers out there writing, but not a lot of them are getting scheduled,” Higdon says. “(It has) more to do with people being aware that that music is around and giving it a chance.”
View the complete festival schedule: http://www.esm.rochester.edu/wmf/events/