BOWLING GREEN, O.—Two BGSU alumnae who have had influential careers will receive honorary doctorates from the University during fall commencement ceremonies. The board of trustees approved the degrees at the Dec. 5 meeting.
Pulitzer Prize-winner Jennifer Higdon ’86 is one of America’s most acclaimed and most frequently performed living composers. She has become a major figure in contemporary classical music, with commissions in the orchestral, chamber, choral, vocal, and wind ensemble genres.
She holds doctoral and master’s degrees in music composition from the University of Pennsylvania, a bachelor’s degree in flute performance from BGSU, and an Artist Diploma in music composition from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she now holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Composition Studies.
Her Percussion Concerto won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Classical Composition in January 2010. Higdon also received the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto.
She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters (two awards), the Koussevitzky Foundation, the Pew Fellowship in the Arts, Meet-the-Composer, the National Endowment for the Arts, and ASCAP.
Most recently, Higdon has written an opera commissioned by Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia, and Minnesota Opera, based on the National Book Award winner “Cold Mountain,” by Charles Frazier. It will be premiered in Santa Fe on August 1, 2015.