THE STORY BEHIND: Higdon's "Cold Mountain Suite"

On March 17 & 18, conductor Tito Muñoz and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra will present WEST SIDE STORY with pianist Alexander Gavrylyuk.

Title: Cold Mountain Suite
Composer: Jennifer Higdon (1962- )
Last time performed by the Rhode Island Philharmonic: This is a RI Philharmonic Orchestra premiere. This piece is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani and strings.

The Story: Jennifer Higdon is one of the leading women on the American music scene. She was educated at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she now holds the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies. Her prestigious list of honors includes awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Endowment for the Arts, capped by the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto. She has occupied various composer-in-residence chairs and became the first woman to be named a featured composer at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival. From 1994 to 2021, Dr. Higdon was a professor of composition at the Curtis Institute of Music, where she held the Milton L. Rock Chair in Compositional Studies. Higdon was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters (considered the highest form of recognition of artistic merit in the U.S.) during its annual Ceremonial in 2022.
       
Higdon’s first opera, Cold Mountain, is in two acts plus epilogue with libretto by Gene Scheer. It is based on Charles Frazier's 1997 best-selling novel of the same name. After a delay in obtaining rights, the Santa Fe Opera, in cooperation with Opera Philadelphia and the Minnesota Opera, commissioned Cold Mountain. Higdon and Scheer then began work. Higdon felt “at home” with its story, which takes place in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina during the Civil War, because, although she was born in New York, she was raised in Tennessee not far from that locale. The opera premiered at Santa Fe, and won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016; the first American opera to do so in the award’s history.
       
Here is the synopsis of the opera, Cold Mountain, as published on the composer’s website:

The opera tells the story of W.P. Inman, a Confederate soldier who, after being treated for wounds he received during the battle of Petersburg, chooses to desert the army and make his way back to his beloved Ada Monroe. Inman knows that the Home Guard is hunting down deserters. Emotionally gutted by the horrors he has experienced and desperate to see Ada again, he decides to take the risk and begins the dangerous journey home. When Inman left for the war, he believed the war would not last but six months. It is now four years later. Ada, a Southern lady once used to a life of privilege, has now been forced to deal with a life of profound deprivation. With the help of Ruby, a resourceful mountain woman, Ada's life has been slowly transformed. The women help each other, not only to endure the war, but also to grow in ways that are both unexpected and profound.
 
Cold Mountain, set during the American Civil War — the pivotal conflict in our nation's history — is the story of a soldier who wonders whether the violence he has endured has in some way ruined him and made him unworthy of love. In the struggle to answer this question, Inman is forced to examine where his real allegiance lies. Is it to his country? Is it to a cause? What is at the center of his soul? What are the core principles that he needs to abide by to feel essentially human again? Cold Mountain, like The Odyssey, on which the novel is loosely based, has at its center a transformative journey.

Program Notes by Dr. Michael Fink © 2023 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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