#Jennifer Higdon

[music-crush]

Jennifer Higdon

Happy birthday, Jennifer Elaine Higdon!

[mozart2006]

Internationale Hugo-Wolf-Akademie - Thomas Hampson e Wolfram Rieger

Foto ©IHWA La Hugo-Wolf-Akademie ha concluso la sua stagione con il recital di un’ autentica star del canto come Thomas Hampson, Continue reading Untitled

[officiallanxichen]

hit up my inbox for cool queer composer facts i would love to tell you some <3

[depressedraisin]

classical pieces that give me the same energy as the car

my classical phase is coming back bear with me

sergei rachmaninoff- morceaux de fantaisie op. 3 no. 1: elegie (sheku kaneh mason, cello & isata kaneh mason, piano)

jennifer higdon- harp concerto movt. 3: lullaby (yolanda kondonassis, harp; rochester philharmonic, orchestra)

pt. ravi shankar, philip glass- ragas in minor scale (ravi shankar, sitar et. al)

gian carlo menotti- violin concerto (jennifer koh, violin; spoleto festival orchestra)

erich korngold- theme for deception (1946)

einojuhani rautavaara- deux serenades no. 1: serenade pour mon amour (hilary hahn, violin; orchestre de philharmonique radio france)

franz schubert- nacht und träume, op. 43, no. 2 (peter pears, voice & benjamin britten, piano)

sergei prokofiev- piano concerto no. 3, op. 26 (martha argerich, piano; berliner philharmoniker orchestra)

[spacelazarwolf]

What are some of your favorite operas?

my absolute favorite is l’elisir d’amore. i also really like mozart’s operas in general. love puccini, and i did an aria from jennifer higdon’s cold mountain a few years ago and it was amazing.

[themusicaldesk]

"We Wish a very Happy Birthday to One of the Greatest Violin Players of our time Hilary Hahn

Hilary Hahn (born November 27, 1979) is an American violinist. A three-time Grammy Award winner, she has played as a soloist with orchestras and conductors, and as a recitalist. Several composers have written works for her, including concerti by Edgar Meyer and Jennifer Higdon, partitas by Antón García Abril, two serenades for violin and orchestra by Einojuhani Rautavaara, and a violin and piano sonata by Lera Auerbach."

[ioboesess]

100 Days of Practice, Day 1

Today I started working on audition excerpts for band/orchestra auditions in September. Our excerpts are from the Mozart oboe concerto (always), Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra, and the overture to Rossini’s La Scala di Seta. My chops have been weakened™️ by my inconsistent practice since school got out (since before school got out tbh), so I was only able to get through 40 minutes of practice.

Practice breakdown:

10 minutes of long tones

10 minutes of scales

10 minutes of Mozart

10 minutes of Higdon

Total cumulative practice time: 40 minutes

[sloshed-cinema]

Tár (2022)

If Mahler stated that a symphony should be the world, then Lydia Tár’s professional symphony is crumbling around her.  This is a story of grooming and professional corruption, about using power to take advantage of others and exploit them for what you desire.  Yet Todd Field resisted the urge to make a simple Harvey Weinstein type story, opting instead to use the incredibly specific and incredibly dense palette of classical music and the orchestral industry as his palette.  The movie doesn’t hold the viewer’s hand in the least; from moment one, references and nods are flying fast and loose, calling out everyone from Furtwängler and Karajan to Marin Alsop and Michael Tilson Thomas.  Hildur Guðnadóttir plays a clever double-role, mentioned by name alongside peers such as Jennifer Higdon but also furnishing elements of the diegetic and non-diegetic soundscape.  Extended rehearsal sequences in Tár’s pidgin German play out free of subtitles.  The minutiae of orchestral union proceedings are debated time and again.  All of these references, all of this time, all of this vocabulary is necessary to establish the zealous obsession that surrounds the craft for Tár.  She has crafted her whole identity around being the next soothsayer of the Western canon, the protégée of Bernstein himself.  More importantly, it’s a veneer of legitimacy.  It’s clear from the start that the maestro is less than “politically correct”: a dressing-down of a Juilliard student regarding his opinions on contemporary art music and views on Bach steps beyond the pale of a misguided tough love approach and more into the territory of personal attack.  But this is a pattern.  Fields approaches the everyday administrative details of Tár’s life with the same meticulousness.  Insidious little instances begin to float to the surface, indicating a predatory tendency that others notice and become increasingly intolerant toward.  The camera lingers on Lydia’s assistant Francesca as she lip-syncs her boss’s plaudits during a public interview, casts furtive glances or begins to wonder why she’s being asked certain things.  Even the matter of handing over a laptop becomes a dangerous prospect.  And the conductor’s wife and colleague, concertmaster Sharon Goodnow, becomes increasingly disillusioned with Tár’s actions as a new affair begins to become apparent in newcomer cellist Olga.  In this sense, the deliberate and clinical handling of camera in many scenes begins to build a case against the maestro, feeling in beats almost akin to The Assistant.  A specific event involving a fellow for a program Tár started for women conductors lingers in the shadows, eluded to but never fully elucidated.  Krista Taylor had no prospects in the field after Tár torpedoed her career.  The maestro insists this was due to Taylor’s mental instability, but other evidence suggests that there was a revenge aspect to this.  The fantasy life of private jets and book talks can be ripped away so quickly.

And yet the fantasy of it all does have its place in the tapestry of this narrative.  As with music, there is room for ambiguity here, space to interpret.  Especially in the back half of the film, Field calls into question Tár’s state of mind through her troubled dreams and strange nocturnal discoveries.  Distorted images of the women in her life haunt her, intertwined with moments in the Amazon recalling her past ethnomusicological work.  Yet as things begin to unravel and Tár loses the thread, the nature of objective reality becomes more tenuous.  As with the scandal reveal, it’s subtle at first.  In her rehearsal home, the maestro is haunted by a persistent doorbell sound, which heartbreakingly later turns out to be the elderly woman next door in distress.  The legacy of Krista Taylor’s fallout and eventual suicide comes in the form of labyrinthine drawings which appear in gift book inscriptions, metronome faces, or formed in clay in her adoptive daughter’s room.  Just where these come from or who makes them is never made explicit, but that doesn’t make them any less haunting for Tár.  As she courts Olga, or seduces her, the cellist becomes ever more disillusioned with Tár just as she becomes more elusive.  At one point, Tár chases Olga into the seemingly abandoned building where she perhaps resides, only to find the cellist vanished, seemingly a figment of her imagination.  Descending into the basement, she instead finds a fox or a wolf, her predatory nature turning back on her.  Ghosts haunt the periphery. By the time it has all fallen away, she rushes onto the stage mid-performance, attacking her impostor, claiming the score for herself.  It’s her work, she alone can interpret it.  Utterly fallen from grace, the final sequences play out like a sort of bizarro-world fantasy.  New York is no longer a place of glamour, but an ugly outer borough rail station, everything drab and grey and muddy.  Her final gig is the coup de grace.  She is engaged to perform a Japanese work for a Southeast Asian concert hall.  The final shot is a bitterly funny punch in the gut: she’s at the bottom of the barrel, performing video game music for a rapt audience of cosplayers.  Goodbye haughty, lofty concert halls.  

Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, and Sophie Kauer all turn in strong, nuanced performances.  But Cate Blanchett is the obvious powerhouse here.  She’s fun as the haughty, dismissive maestro who knows just how it’s all done.  This makes her fall all the more pathetic, not even able to see her daughter.  It’s a late scene which cements just how hard this has all hit her, and a brilliant piece of acting from Blanchett.  Sitting alone at her old family home in New York with a childhood field hockey medal around her neck, Tár watches a recording of one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts where he describes how music can be used to communicate ideas words cannot.  Her face says it all: this is her whole world still, but now she no longer can access it, by her own hand.  She controlled time with her baton, but she cannot control others in the same fashion.

THE RULES

PICK ONE

Select either MAHLER FIVE or the ELGAR CELLO CONCERTO and sip whenever that work is mentioned.

SIP

Someone name-drops a composer or conductor.

The narrative transitions to a new city.

Lydia calls someone a robot.

A scene contains a language other than English spoken in dialogue.

BIG DRINK

A labyrinth is drawn on something.

Tár cuts off the orchestra during rehearsal.

[chasenews]

Violinist Timothy Schwarz Releases Fifth Album as a Leader

Stock photo Recognized for his solid technique and considerable flair, acclaimed violinist Timothy Schwarz continues his career-long dedication to championing American composers with his latest recording The Living American. The Living American is a collection of contemporary works for violin by seven of today’s leading living American composers: Steven Sametz, Jennifer Higdon, Jessie…

[jempai]

Operas are continuously revived (currently in an American premiere of a forgotten French operetta!). The unfortunate bit is that recordings aren’t often available and production runs tend to only be a few weeks at most, so you have to search to see new stuff.

Opera is also very regional. There are thriving opera scenes across the globe, but because of language differences, lack of marketing, and the absence of readily available pro-shots, many of these operas are not known outside of their area. In the past five years, I’ve been lucky enough to see many non-canon operas live in my city:

Daniel Catán's La hija de Rappaccini (Mexico, 1996, Spanish)

Hermogenes Ilagan’s Dalagang Bukid (Philippines, 1917, Tagalog)

Uzong Choe’s As the Moon Arrives on the Waters (South Korea, 2018, Korean) 

Uzong Choe’s 1945 (South Korea, 2019, Korean)

Liliya Ugay’s Chhlong Tonle (USA, 2021, English)

Daniel Catán's Florencia en el Amazonas (Mexico, 1996, Spanish)

Mark Adamo’s Little Women (USA, 1998, English)

Eugen d’Albert’s Tiefland (Germany, 1903, German)

Federico Moreno Torroba’s Luisa Fernanda  (Spain, 1932, Spanish)

Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (USA, 2000, English)

Jennifer Higdon’s Cold Mountain (USA, 2016, English)

Laura Kaminsky’s As One (USA, 2016, English)

Plus a bunch of smaller premieres from up-and-coming composers and revived operas from every era

There’s definitely a passion for works outside of the canon and introducing audiences to new stuff, but it takes time. Localized operas tend not to become part of the canon because joining the canon takes reviews, critical success, and countless productions to determine if a work is relevant, singable, accessible, and enjoyable. Opera companies rely on audiences’ tickets to fund the work they do, and it’s easier to sell tickets if people recognize La Traviata from Pretty Woman versus a random premiere from a composer they’ve never heard of.

Why modern academic composers don't write new operas? When staging and re-staging the same old pieces, over and over again, will be enough?

I look at your opera posts and reblogs and I just don't get the appeal. It's all so limited and stagnant, people pay attention to the smallest details because there is nothing else to think of, no revelation and inspiration.

They are all the same, like a seven or ten of them that every theater in the world had chosen for the rest of eternity and that's all. If the genre is truly dead and can not be revived, well, but why don't revive some real old operas?

Once I had to work with some Italian library, and they had DOZENS of printed librettos and notes of different 19th century operas of different composers from France, Germany and Italy, there were even several "Beauty and the Beast" kind of things. Opera was so diverse and big back then. It was fun.

There must be something hidden and pretty, something more than a group of over-used big names.

(Just in case, it wasn't negativity, I'm just thinking)

I'm all in favor of new operas and of reviving the countless obscure older ones. But I'm afraid you've come to the wrong person to complain about the constant re-staging of the popular warhorses.

Maybe it's because I'm autistic, but I like revisiting the same operas again and again, with different singers, conductors, and staging. I like seeing each different performance breathe new life into the same opera and find new insights into the plot and characters. For me at least, there is revelation and inspiration in it.

[yourdailyqueer]

Jennifer Higdon

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 31 December 1962

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Composer, musician, professor

[thecuriouspianist]

Women compose. Women conduct.

[ more 2019 stats here! ]

[pitchybeachwitch]

Happy Pride Month!!

(Classical composers edition)

[lavenderfeminist]

I’m trying to explore arias for my senior recital so I’ve been starting from the beginning:

La liberazione di Ruggiero dall’isola d’Alcina (The Libération of Ruggiero from the island of Alcina) by Francesca Caccini is the first known opera written by a woman and was likely the first Italian opera to be performed outside Italy. I am partial to the Siren’s aria and there’s a recording of it from McGill University that I’ve watched parts of!

Operas I’ve actually fully listened through by women are:

Le dernier sorcier (The Last Sorcerer) by Pauline Viardot (lots of killer arias)

Cendrillon (Cinderella) by Pauline Viardot (premiered when she was 83!!)

Alice in Wonderland by Unsuk Chin (the staging of one is CRAZY)

The Little Prince by Rachel Portman (the music is magical)

Cold Mountain by Jennifer Higdon (tbh I didn’t enjoy this one much and would need to listen again probably, but I’ve seen it live and met her AND she’s a lesbian so that’s pretty cool)

It’s just so depressing how many operas there are by women and how few of them are ever staged, let alone part of the operatic canon

[marxsound]

Dash by Jennifer Higdon also nominated for the best new composition grammy this year happy friday