A Coffee with Jennifer Higdon

Higdon Childhood2 This is the edited video of the virtual coffee I had with the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The original “Coffee with…” took place on Wednesday July 15th 2020 on my Facebook wall. It was simultaneously transmitted on Music Without Quarantine.

Jennifer Higdon was born in Brooklyn in 1962 and has dedicated her life to composing new music. Her parents, Charles Kenneth Higdon and Judy Higdon, were rock ‘n roll fans. So, she didn’t grow up in a particularly classical music household. Jennifer is an incredibly prolific composer based in Philadelphia. “Blue Cathedral” is her most performed work to date, a piece Jennifer wrote to honour her younger brother Andrew Blue Higdon who died from skin cancer in 1998 at age 33.

On this video, we speak about Jennifer’s early years when she took up flute lessons and listened to lots of rock, pop, folk, blue grass & country music, being The Beattles her band of reference. If you wish to know about Jennifer’s projects and career, please visit her webpage: http://jenniferhigdon.com. Apart from her fabulous talent as a composer (something anyone can just check by listening to her music), the thing that captivated me the most while we were having our “virtual coffee” was her true kindness, and I really mean it, because she really walks the talk…

Previous “A Coffee with…” guests were: the conductor Marco Antonio García de Paz, the music critic Arturo Reverter and accordionist Iñaki Alberdi, the composer & music critic Robert Hugill, the bass singer & lutenist Joel Frederiksen, the conductor Cristóbal Soler, the music agent Andreea Butucariu and musicologist, the musicologist & cornetto player Bruce Dickey, the orchestra conductor Mei-Ann Chen and the musicologist and director of the early music ensemble “O bando de surunyo” Hugo Sanches. If you want to see those “virtual coffees”, please click on 10 Musical Coffees to Remember.

A coffee with Jennifer Higdon