Composer Jennifer Higdon during rehearsal at the OK Mozart Festival in Oklahoma. Photo courtesy of OK Mozart Festival.
In Friday’s (4/25) National Public Radio, Tom Huizenga writes, “ ‘Accessible’ can be a dirty word in contemporary classical music. For decades, composers have outfitted their works with gnarly tangles of complexity, and heaven forbid if there’s a tune you can hum. That music rightfully has its cheerleaders, but composer Jennifer Higdon isn’t among them. She is a vigorous defender of melody, and when her music is described as ‘accessible,’ she doesn’t wince, she rejoices. Traditional-sounding melody, harmony and rhythm are Higdon’s building blocks, but her works are anything but old-fashioned. They tend to percolate with an organic freshness, and a musical language that’s large in vocabulary but easy to grasp. Across her career, she has pulled off the near-impossible feat of walking the fine line between classical music’s fanatics and first-timers, satisfying both camps. When Higdon writes music—whether it’s her operatic adaptation of Cold Mountain, chamber works or any of her 15 concertos—she insists that it communicates, that it’s capable of being understood and appreciated. So far, the 62-year-old Brooklyn native’s track record is a success. Her music routinely receives upwards of 250 performances per year, and she’s won a Pulitzer Prize and three Grammys.” The article includes an extensive question-and-answer interview with Higdon.
