American composer Jennifer Higdon (b. 1962) was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Georgia and Tennessee. She was a relative latecomer to musical training, starting flute at age 15 and composition while in college at Bowling Green State University. But she was a determined student who impressed her teachers with her work ethic and creativity. After Bowling Green, she earned an Artist Diploma in composition at the Curtis Institute, then masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, where her mentor was George Crumb. She later returned to Curtis as the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies. In the midst of all of this training and teaching, she has made a lasting mark on classical music, receiving hundreds of performances every year and commissions and recordings from dozens of prestigious individuals and organizations around the world. She has won a huge treasury of awards for music: the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Music for her Violin Concerto, two Grammy awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, several composer residencies, and many more. So her piece for young band, Rhythm Stand, is all the more significant for coming from such a widely renowned composer. (See more at her website and Wikipedia).
Higdon wrote Rhythm Stand in 2004 for the American Composers Forum and their BandQuest series of wind band works for younger players. The score contains the following program note:
Rhythm Stand, by Jennifer Higdon, pays tribute to the constant presence of rhythm in our lives, from the pulse of a heart beating to the rhythmic sounds of the world around us. Celebrating the “regular order” we all experience, Higdon incorporates traditional and non-traditional sounds within a 4/4 meter American style swing to heighten student awareness and enhance their creativity. Organized in unique compositional and rhythmic patterns, this work invites students to explore multiple ways of organizing sounds and making music.
In the composer’s own words: “Since rhythm is everywhere, not just in music (ever listened to the tires of a car running across pavement, or a train on railroad tracks?), I’ve incorporated sounds that come not from the instruments that you might find in a band, but from ‘objects’ that sit nearby…music stands and pencils! Music stands are played with pencils, which are both ‘objects’ at hand. Not only that, but some of the performers in this piece get even more basic…they snap their fingers. Because music can be any kind of sound arranged into an interesting pattern, I decided to add sounds that you wouldn’t normally hear coming from band instruments, sounds which are created out of ordinary things that might be sitting nearby. Composing is merely the job of combining interesting sounds into interesting patterns. And interesting patterns create cool rhythms. So…I’m making a STAND FOR RHYTHM!”
Listen and follow along with the score:
Find out more about Rhythm Stand at the American Composers Forum, J. W. Pepper, Hal Leonard, Jennifer Higdon’s Website, Composer’s Datebook, the Wind Repertory Project, and check out the teaching guide from GIA Music.