Forever Flowing

Jennifer Higdon - Blue Cathedral

Jennifer Higdon is a major figure in contemporary Classical music, receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and a 2010 Grammy for her Percussion Concerto. Higdon enjoys several hundred performances a year of her works, and blue cathedral is one of America's most performed contemporary orchestral works, with more than 600 performances worldwide since its premiere in 2000. Her works have been recorded on nearly fifty CDs. Higdon's most current project was an opera based on the best-selling novel, Cold Mountain, by Charles Frazier. It was co-commissioned by Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia and Minnesota Opera in collaboration with North Carolina Opera. Higdon recently won the International Opera Award for Best World Premiere and the opera recording was nominated for 2 Grammy awards. She holds the Rock Chair in Composition at The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. Her music is published exclusively by Lawdon Press.

 
Oscar Navarro - II Concerto for clarinet

2018 Concerto Competition winner Ryan Pereira

Oscar Navarro was born in the village of Novelda (Alicante, Spain), where he began studying music at an early age. Having written music for feature films, short films, and documentaries, Navarro holds many national and international composition awards for both his concert music and film music. The Second Concerto for Clarinet and Symphony Orchestra was a commission of the “Valencia Music Institute” and dedicated to clarinetist José Franch Ballester.  

The performance features Ryan Pereira, Brookline Symphony Orchestra’s 2018 Concerto Competition winner. Ryan is a clarinetist, technician, and student of The Boston Conservatory at Berklee, studying under Michael Norsworthy to earn a Master of Music in Clarinet Performance. He earned a Bachelor of Music in Music Education and Clarinet Performance from Ithaca College School of Music. Aside from his performing career, Ryan is the Founder of Pereira 3D, a company that manufactures customized clarinet barrels and bells, as well as clarinet and saxophone ligatures that enhance the playing experience.
 

Ralph Vaughan Williams - Symphony No.5

Ralph Vaughan Williams is among the best-known British symphonists, noted for his very wide range of moods. When Vaughan Williams started writing his Fifth Symphony in 1938, he had been working on the opera “The Pilgrim's Progress” for thirty years. By the 1940s he had appeared to have abandoned the work, and decided to incorporate some of its ideas and themes into other works, most notably the Fifth Symphony. The Symphony premiered in June 1943 and was dedicated to Jean Sibelius. The work is generally serene in character, and was particularly well received for the comfort it gave at a time of all-out war.