#Jennifer 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

[officialjamesflint]

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.

[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…

[don-lichterman]

GRAMMY Nominated Time For Three Discuss Their Album, "Letters for the Future"

GRAMMY Nominated Time For Three Discuss Their Album, “Letters for the Future”

Recorded with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the album comprises world premiere recordings of two Pulitzer Prize-winning composers: Jennifer Higdon and Kevin Puts   Time For Three (TF3) is a classically-trained, genre-crossing string trio comprising violinist Nick Kendall, double-bassist Ranaan Meyer, and VC Artist violinist Charles Yang. They are also known for sharing vocals in their…

[theresa-of-liechtenstein]

how about number 101 (secret bonus song)

oooh this one’s really a bonus song bc i wasn’t expecting it on there!

[newsdeets]

Jordan Ashman Wins BBC Young Musician Contest 2022

Jordan Ashman Wins BBC Young Musician Contest 2022

BBC Young Musician Contest 2022: Jordan Ashman, a percussionist who is 18 years old, has won the prestigious BBC Young Musician competition. After playing Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto, which called for him to use drums, a marimba, a vibraphone, and even a car’s brake drum, he won the championship. Anna Lapwood, chair of the judging panel, said his “emotional” performance “made all of us…

[yourdailyqueer]

Jennifer Higdon

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 31 December 1962

Ethnicity: White - American

Occupation: Composer, musician, professor

[pitchybeachwitch]

Happy Pride Month!!

(Classical composers edition)

[thecuriouspianist]

Women compose. Women conduct.

[ more 2019 stats here! ]

[marxsound]

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

[churchofsatannews]

Vox Satanae - Episode 429

Vox Satanae – Episode 429

Vox Satanae – Episode 429 – 166 Minutes – Week of March 11, 2019

This week we hear works by Andreas Hammerschmidt, Nicolas de Grigny, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Christian Cannabich, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Sir Andrzej Panufnik, and Jennifer Higdon with performances by Ensemble Polyharmonique, Orkiestra Historyczna, Alexander Schneider, John Grew, Peter Michalica, Elena…