Preconcert Interview with Jennifer Higdon

Composer Jennifer Higdon discusses her viola concerto. Speaker Biography: One of America's most popular composers of art music, Jennifer Higdon is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, holding the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition Studies. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, the Curtis Institute of Music, and Bowling Green State University. In 2014 she received an honorary doctorate from Bowling Green, which named her one of its 100 most prominent graduates during the university's 2010 centennial commemoration. Higdon entered music as a flutist during her teenage years and she began composing at age twenty-one. She has studied conducting privately with Robert Spano and was a pupil of flutist Judith Bentley at Bowling Green. Robert Spano conducted the Philadelphia Orchestra and violinist Benjamin Beilman in performances of the Violin Concerto in Philadelphia in 2015. Higdon has also composed orchestral solo concertos for oboe, percussion, piano, and soprano saxophone. Her percussion concerto was awarded the 2009 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. She is also the recipient of Guggenheim and Pew fellowships, and has received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. For transcript, captions, and more information, visit http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/feature_wdesc.php?rec=6766