Jennifer Higdon Wins the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music

This afternoon, the winners of the 2010 Pulitzer Prizes were announced. The winner of the Music Prize is Jennifer Higdon, receiving the award for her Violin Concerto, composed for Hilary Hahn and premiered by her in February 2009.

You can read the announcement as it was posted at The New Music Box where I found it through Facebook.

You can also read her own response to winning a Pulitzer, here, also posted at the New Music Box.

I've also posted more about the Violin Concerto on my blog, Thoughts on a Train, including some comments I'd jotted down while listening to the on-line broadcast of the concerto last June.

This past January, audiences in Harrisburg got to hear two works by Jennifer Higdon. With Market Square Concerts, the Cypress Quartet performed "Impressions," a string quartet that Higdon composed for them. Ms. Higdon was here to talk about the piece before the performance and to meet the audience.

The following week, the Harrisburg Symphony performed the opening movement of "CityScape," a lively overture called 'SkyLine.' In previous seasons, they also performed the Percussion Concerto (a work that won her a Grammy earlier this year) and one of the most frequently performed new orchestral works in the United States in recent years, her Blue Cathedral.

Congratulations to Jennifer Higdon on her Pulitzer Prize!

- Dr. Dick

Photo credit: Candace diCarlo.