Run time: Approx. 12 minutes

In Jennifer Higdon’s mind, Blue Cathedral is a visceral journey through an otherworldly realm. She imagines a glass cathedral in the sky, clouds drifting by, visible through the transparent walls. “In my mind’s eye,” she says, “the listener would enter from the back of the sanctuary, floating along the corridor amongst giant crystal pillars, moving in a contemplative stance. The stained glass windows’ figures would start moving with song, singing a heavenly music. The listener would float down the aisle, slowly moving upward at first and then progressing at a quicker pace, rising towards an immense ceiling which would open to the sky … I wanted to create the sensation of contemplation and quiet peace at the beginning, moving towards the feeling of celebration and ecstatic expansion of the soul.”

Higdon’s search for such a feeling was born from a period of significant personal grief; when beginning work on Blue Cathedral, she had recently lost her younger brother, Andrew Blue Higdon, to skin cancer. In a 2005 interview with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, she described the piece as being about “deciding if life was going to be about living or about death.” There are sections of real turbulence within the music. “I was kind of ticked off,” she explained. “Part of mourning is anger.”

As children, Higdon played the flute and Andrew the clarinet. The two instruments are featured prominently throughout the work. “In tribute to my brother,” she explains, “I feature solos for the clarinet and the flute . Because I am the older sibling, it is the flute that appears first in this dialog. At the end of the work, the two instruments continue their dialogue, but it is the flute that drops out and the clarinet that continues on in the upward progressing journey.”

Jennifer Higdon is one of today’s most widely performed and acclaimed living composers. Perhaps her ability to evoke such vivid imagery is one reason her music is so lauded. The percussion effects in the work’s opening glint and gleam like light reflecting from crystalline windows. Her textures sparkle with the suggestion of stained glass, and as the orchestra builds to an apex, it takes on the breadth of an organ at full tilt.