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libretto came directly from the novel, with Jennifer Higdon helping to shape
the language and speech patterns of the southern characters. She remarked
in 2022, “Charles [Frazier] didn’t include anything from the perspective of the
slaves during the war, and Gene and I felt that was important. We created a
character, Lucinda, who was a runaway slave and was forced to decide whether
or not to help our main character.” The full score was workshopped at Curtis
in 2012-13 and completed in twenty months. The opera’s music is framed by a
men’s chorus, featuring the voices of the Home Guard, Confederate deserters,
and the deceased. Both leading characters (Inman and his beloved, Ada) sing
arias informed by Appalachian music, and fragments of folk tunes permeate the
score. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch critic remarked of the premiere, “Higdon is best
known for her instrumental work, and Cold Mountain stands out for the evocative
quality of the orchestration.” The San Francisco Classical Voice praised the score’s
“sure-handed clarity, accessibility, and inventiveness.”
2019, New Music for America, a commissioning consortium which now counts
nearly 40 orchestras across the United States (whose steering committee includes
our own conductor, Steven Karidoyanes), commissioned Higdon to rework the
best parts of Cold Mountain into a seventeen-minute symphonic suite, opening
with music from the beginning of Act 2. This Suite quickly moves through the Act
I finale, Storm Music, the quintet “I Should be Crying,” and two duets (“Orion” and
“Bless You Ruby”) featuring the sound of Ada’s father’s fiddle. The Suite concludes
with music from Ada’s contemplative aria “I Should Feel Sorry for You” and
Inman’s homecoming. The Delaware Symphony gave the first performance in
September 2022, and this evening’s performance by the Plymouth Philharmonic
Orchestra represents the suite’s Massachusetts premiere.
About the composer
Jennifer Higdon is one of America’s most acclaimed
figures in contemporary classical music, receiving the
2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto,
a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto, a 2018
Grammy for her Viola Concerto and, most recently,
a 2020 Grammy for her Harp Concerto. Higdon’s first
opera, Cold Mountain, won the International Opera
Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording
was nominated for 2 Grammy awards. Most recently, she was inducted
into membership in the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works and her
works have been recorded on more than seventy CDs. Her music is published
exclusively by Lawdon Press.
2022/23 Season Oh, the Places We’ll Go! PAGE 13
2022/23 Season Oh, the Places We’ll Go! PAGE 13
