Jennifer Higdon

Jennifer Higdon was born on New Year’s Eve, 1962 in Brooklyn, NY. She didn’t start playing an instrument until she taught herself to play the flute at the age of 15 and began formal studies at 18 when she entered college. Despite this late start, the Pulitzer Prize and three-time Grammy winner has become a major figure in Classical music and is one of the few individuals in the U.S. who makes her living from commissions. Higdon claims that her late exposure to classical music had an important effect on her style: “Because I came to classical music very differently than most people, the newer stuff had more appeal for me than the older.”

Higdon averages 300 performances a year of her works, in many genres within classical music: from opera to chamber, symphonic to band, solo works to concerti. She has even written works in forms not tackled before: a bluegrass/classical hybrid concerto, a concerto for the entire low brass section of an orchestra (at the request of Maestro Ricardo Muti), and one that features 6 soloists (for Eighth Blackbird).

After receiving the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for her Violin Concerto, Higdon also won a Grammy for her Percussion Concerto…a singular feat which no other classical composer has ever managed: two of the biggest major awards for two different pieces in one year. Additionally, she was awarded one of the largest and most prestigious composition prizes in the world, The Nemmers Prize in Music from Northwestern University. Her opera, Cold Mountain, won the prestigious International Opera Award for Best World Premiere in 2016; the first American opera to do so in the award’s history.

She is one of America’s most frequently performed composers today. Her music has been hailed by Fanfare Magazine as having “the distinction of being at once complex, sophisticated but readily accessible emotionally”, with the Times of London citing it as “…traditionally rooted, yet imbued with integrity and freshness.” The Chicago Sun Times recently cited her music as “both modern and timeless, complex and sophisticated, and immensely engaging in a way that both charms and galvanizes an audience craving something new and full of urgency, yet not distancing.” John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune called her writing, “beautiful, accessible, inventive, and impeccably crafted.”

Higdon met her wife Cheryl Lawson in their high school band. “We were both flute players, and our school’s band often traveled to competitions. As a result, we spent a lot of time together. Cheryl was two years behind me in high school, but we became close. Our subsequent relationship grew from a very deep understanding of each other. We were good friends for a long time before we became romantically involved.” Their relationship became romantic in college at Bowling Green State University. They were married in 2014 in a ceremony officiated by renowned conductor Marin Alsop. 

“I’m so fortunate, in that I feel incredibly ‘safe’ within my marriage. As a result, I can be completely vulnerable within the context of my music. This helps me immensely as a composer. I know Cheryl’s love and support is always there. That assurance enables me to [creatively] ‘wear my heart on my sleeve.’ I attribute that to her, entirely—it wouldn’t be possible without her.” 

Read more about Higdon & Cheryl’s story here. 

NICO MUHLY

Nico Muhly was born in 1981 in Vermont and began studying piano when he was 10 years old. In 2024 he went to Julliard where he studied composition and when we was a first-year student began working for Philip Glass as an archivist, and later an editor, conductor, and keyboardist, for eight years.

Muhly has composed music for the Metropolitan Opera (Two Boys, 2011, and Marnie, 2018, English National Opera co-productions), for the New York, Los Angeles and Berlin Philharmonics and the San Francisco Symphony, and for stage including the 2013 Broadway revival of The Glass Menagerie, film, including The Reader, Worth, The Humans,and The Librarians, and TV, including Pachinko. His concerto for two pianos and orchestra, In Certain Circles, premiered in 2021 and made its American debut in 2022 with the New York Philharmonic. Then in 2025, Marin Alsop and the New York Philharmonic premiered his Violin Concerto at Lincoln Center.

His works have been performed by the choirs of Westminster Abbey, King’s College Cambridge, and Sidney Sussex College Cambridge, where he is composer-in-residence, and by the Tallis Scholars. He has collaborated with musical artists Anohni, Björk, James Blake, The National, Paul Simon, and Sufjan Stevens, choreographers Kyle Abraham, Benjamin Millepied, Mark Morris, and Justin Peck, and visual artists Maira Kalman, Yu Hong, and Oliver Beer.

Muhly also worked with VSO Music Director Eric Jacobsen & The Knight on the American Premiere of his song cycle, Impossible Things, and contributed to the re-recording of David Bowie‘s 1987 album, Never Let Me Down.

Nico has been with his long-term partner, Ben Wyskida, a political consultant and CEO of Fenton Communications, for several years and they currently live in New York!  

Adiescar Chase

Born in Bedford, England Adiescar Chase first began her love for composing after her mother sectrely enrolled her in the “Sound and Music Summer School” coure at the Purcell School for Young Musicians. She graduated first class with a degree in composition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 2017 and earned a master’s degree in Composition for Film and Television at the National Film and Television School in 2021.

In 2021, she did composition work for the documentary, Between the Trees. She sound sampled the face of a leaf, converting the data into an electronic sound.

Chase composed the original score for Netflix’s Heartstopper and recieved a BAFTA nomination for Best Originial Score for the series. For inspiration, Chase drew on all the music she has listened to throughout her life, but most importantly, she channelled the emotions in the story and from her inner self from when she was growing up.

“I just felt very invested in the characters, and the show itself … I’m a bisexual person and, growing up, it was a very strange journey for me… I don’t really feel like I ever questioned my sexuality – but at the same time, I never really opened up about it.”

Adiescar’s other recent projects include ‘All Night Wrong’ comedy film which recently premiered at South By Southwest London Film Festival, the recent Jack Thorne written romance drama for Channel 4, ‘Falling’, the return of the tv drama ‘Bergerac’  and composed for the revived BBC hit, ‘Waterloo Road‘ in 2023.

Further works include the BBC documentary ‘Sarah Everard: The Search for Justice‘, Channel 4 drama ‘Consent’, BBC documentary ‘Tommy Jessop Goes To Hollywood’, and a collaboration with the legendary electronic artist Jean-Michel Jarre on his latest album.

​In 2024, Adiescar, along with Claude Samard Polikar, accompanied Jarre at several events, including the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games.

Jordan jinosko

Jordan Jinosko, born in 1994, began learning piano at age eight and, a few years later, she attended a performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fifth Symphony that moved her deeply and inspired her to begin writing music.

Winner of the Brazosport Symphony Orchestra Composition Competition, the Green Dot Composers Competition, the Molly Mulligan Artistic Scholarship, the John A. Wollaver Award, and the After Life Film Festival’s Best Film Score Award, Jordan’s music has been celebrated in the Music International Grand Prix, the Howard Hanson Young Composers Competition, the Adore Project, and the Symphonina Foundation’s Best Symphonina of the Year Competition. She has composed the scores for the award-winning Japanese film Trajectories, and the Australian film,UNFOUND.

Her piece, Three Sketches of Unblemished Earth, topped the Billboard best-selling classical albums chart.

Jinosko studied music composition and music theory at the University of Michigan and the Eastman School of Music’s pre-collegiate division (ECMS). Her composition mentors have included Michael Daugherty (Grammy winner), Bright Sheng (MacArthur Genius), Evan Chambers, Kristen Kuster, Margaret Henry, and others. Jinosko also has participated in symposia led by faculty at Juilliard, Yale, Princeton, and Eastman.

Jinosko’s music draws inspiration from her experiences around gender. Her piece, Regeneration, chronicles the struggle of her own transition, ultimately presenting a triumphant celebration of queer identity. During the summer of 2025 and with the generous support of the Arts Midwest GIG Fund Grant, Jinosko completed an artist residency in Indianapolis, providing free music lessons to LGBTQ+ young adults at Trinity Haven, a 501(c)(3) LGBTQ non-profit organization.