Jennifer Higdon, a composer and rebel in the high brow music world, won a Pulitzer recently for her Violin Concerto. Is that the name of the piece, or is it a description? I don't know. I couldn't tell a fugue from an antiphon. (Well, maybe I could. I did spend a lot of time at the convent...) In any case, look at her leather jacket. And black turtleneck. This big ole butch is unapologetic and damn cool. She taught herself to play the flute at age 15 in rural Tennessee, and then thirty-some-odd years later she wins a Pulitzer as a composer. She also has won a Grammy and a Guggenheim and many other awards. Don't you just love a butch who knows what she's doing? Higdon lives in Philadelphia with her girlfriend Cheryl Lawson and their cats, naturally. The two met in high school, according to The New York Times, and they together own and run Lawdon Press, which publishes all of Higdon's work.
Her orchestral piece, blue cathedral (small caps, k.d. lang-style) is apparently one of the most frequently performed new works in the United States. Her success should be all the more celebrated because she faced constant obstacles, according to the Times: "Ms. Higdon has had her share of detractors, who told her she couldn't compose because she had started so late; that a flute performance major couldn't be a composer; that she would never make a living; and that she would never get into graduate school. Some male composers grumbled to her face that she's only been successful because she's a woman." Ms. Higdon's response? "Everyone runs into naysayers, but if you love something enough and feel passionately enough, you just go on ahead, walk right round the person saying it, proceed down the road and don't look back."
Amen, sister.
