Jennifer Higdon - Part 2

For Good Measure, by Ensemble for These Times (E4TT)
Episode 221: Jennifer Hidgon - Part 2

Looking for a way to listen to diverse creators and to support equity in the arts? Tune in weekly to For Good Measure!

In this week’s episode, we continue our third season, “Talking About Text,” which focuses on creatives, including lyricists, singers, and composers, who work on music with text. Today we talk to Jennifer Higdon about how her project with a narrator, Sigourney Weaver, differs from past vocal compositions, her experience when she lost her voice post-surgery, and advice on how to find your voice as a composer. If you enjoyed today’s conversation and want to know more about Jennifer Higdon, check her out here: http://www.jenniferhigdon.com/. This episode was originally recorded in February 2026.

This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, SF Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. Want to support For Good Measure and E4TT? Make a tax-deductible donation or sign up for our newsletter, and subscribe to the podcast!

Intro music: “Trifolium” by Gabriela Ortiz, performed by E4TT (Ilana Blumberg, violin; Abigail Monroe, cello; Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Below the Surface: Music by Women Composers,” January 29, 2022
Outro music: “Lake Turkana” by Marcus Norris, performed by E4TT (Margaret Halbig, piano), as part of “Alchemy,” October 15, 2021

Transcription courtesy of Otter.ai.
Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1903729/episodes/19656299

Co-Producer, Host, and E4TT co-founder: Nanette McGuinness
Co-Producer and Audio Engineer: Stephanie M. Neumann
Podcast Cover Art: Brennan Stokes
Interns: Renata Volchinskaya, Christy Xu

Transcript

Nanette McGuinness  00:00

[INTRO MUSIC] Welcome to For Good Measure, an interview series celebrating diverse composers and other creative artists. I'm Nanette McGuinness, Artistic Executive Director of Ensemble for These Times. In this week's episode, we continue our conversation with Jennifer Higdon. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS]

Nanette McGuinness  00:27

I want to circle back to the piece with Ruth Bader Ginsburg's words for string quartet and narrator, with Sigourney Weaver voicing the text.

Jennifer Higdon  00:35

Yes, yes.

Nanette McGuinness  00:36

And I want to say that's just intensely cool...

Jennifer Higdon  00:38

[laughs]

Nanette McGuinness  00:38

...right out there, okay. [laughing] So, can you talk about how that project came about, and...

Jennifer Higdon  00:45

Yes!

Nanette McGuinness  00:45

...you said a little bit about how it's different from writing your other vocal works, but if you want to talk more, you can.

Jennifer Higdon  00:51

Yeah, it's... it came about... It sounds like it's a lot more complex than it was, and it's basically because the Pacifica Quartet were the ones who contacted me about it, and I've known those guys since 1997 when we were together at a festival in Utah.

Nanette McGuinness  01:07

Wow!

Nanette McGuinness  01:07

Yeah!

Jennifer Higdon  01:08

I think we were just out of school, all of us...

Nanette McGuinness  01:11

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  01:11

...and they were a newly formed quartet, and I was just getting started as a composer. So we've known each other a really long time, and they've recorded some of my music, but they... they just called and said, "Would you be interested in doing this? You know, we're gonna do something with Sigourney Weaver." And I said, "How the heck did you get Sigourney?"

Jennifer Higdon  01:32

...and they were like, "Well, someone in the quartet knows someone who knows her." I said, "Really?" And so I said, "But her acting schedule isn't this going to be a problem?" And they were like, "Well, it seems like this should work." So they said, "How about doing some texts on Ruth Bader Ginsburg? They also asked Gabriela Lena Frank, who's a fantastic composer, lives on the West Coast...

Nanette McGuinness  01:56

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  01:56

...to do I think it was Rachel Carson, texts on Rachel Carson...

Nanette McGuinness  02:01

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  02:01

So they they asked us both to, to do this, and it was narration. And I have to admit, I... I've never done anything with narration. I've heard pieces narrated, but trying to figure out how to make obvious points where the narration could sit within the music, and hopefully be cued okay, but we haven't had the performance yet, so I don't... [laughing] 

Nanette McGuinness  02:24

[laughs]

Jennifer Higdon  02:24

...I'm not absolutely sure it's all going to work, but... but you do have to think differently about narration. I mean, because the, the music has to be somewhat still; it cannot be overactive, and you've got to have the space for the text. So, how do you make music that emphasizes what you've picked out to be spoken?...

Nanette McGuinness  02:43

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  02:43

And that actually, to me, was the harder thing to be honest, was... picking out the specific text because she has written... She wrote so much stuff, both for speeches and then in court opinions and...

Nanette McGuinness  02:57

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  02:57

...her beliefs. There was a ton of stuff to go through. I mean, it was amazing. But I also wanted references from family members explaining what a day in life in a Supreme Court justice is like. So...

Nanette McGuinness  03:11

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  03:11

...it was... It definitely was very challenging, and I don't know if it worked yet because we haven't had the performance. I'll get back to you on that. [laughing]

Nanette McGuinness  03:20

I would love to hear that. Is it going to be recorded or live streamed? 

Jennifer Higdon  03:24

Yeah, they are actually. I think Pacific is planning on recording it. They are... It's scheduled to be recorded right after we do the premiere. But weirdly, in some bizarre kind of coincidence, I'm running off to another premiere.

Nanette McGuinness  03:37

[laughs] That's because...

Jennifer Higdon  03:37

...the week they are recording, yeah...

Nanette McGuinness  03:39

No, that's because you're always running to premieres because you're in such demand.

Jennifer Higdon  03:44

Yeah, I think it may be just the spring is like something like I've never experienced before. It's seven premieres in four months, so I...

Nanette McGuinness  03:51

Wow.

Jennifer Higdon  03:52

...really. I know it's not, it's not really healthy, but composers never have a say on when these things are going up, and I don't know what happened. It was like a traffic jam of premieres.

Nanette McGuinness  04:03

[laughs]

Jennifer Higdon  04:03

It's good problem, but it's definitely testing my brain's ability to juggle a lot of things simultaneously.

Nanette McGuinness  04:11

It never rains; it only pours. And in this case...

Jennifer Higdon  04:14

Right. [laughing]

Nanette McGuinness  04:14

...you have a hurricane, right?

Jennifer Higdon  04:17

Exactly.

Nanette McGuinness  04:18

Wow. I want to change subjects just a little bit talking about too much going on. Several years ago, you lost your voice post surgically, which must have been awful.

Jennifer Higdon  04:29

Oh God, it was terrible. Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  04:31

Yeah, and thankfully, as we can hear, it proved to be temporary. Can you talk about that experience? And did not being able to speak affect how you felt about writing for voice or even writing music at all?

Jennifer Higdon  04:45

Oh yeah, it was... I had thyroid surgery, and it wasn't... This is interesting. It wasn't... I had no cancer on my thyroid, but...

Nanette McGuinness  04:46

Good.

Jennifer Higdon  04:46

...my thyroid had had nodules for years, and they had been monitoring them for like 20 years, I would go in for like a needle biopsy, and...

Nanette McGuinness  05:03

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  05:03

...basically, they would do an ultrasound on my throat. It sounds really strange. It was a pretty uncomfortable, but they could tell suddenly...

Nanette McGuinness  05:11

I bet.

Jennifer Higdon  05:11

...a couple of years ago that the nodules were growing, and it can throw off. It looked like my... the hormone numbers because basically your thyroid controls the tempo of your body...

Nanette McGuinness  05:23

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  05:23

...and how it functions, and it really can affect your mood. They noticed the numbers were starting to go off, and they just decided to remove it. And it's a major... it's a major surgery. But in my case, I had told the doctor, I said, "Look, I actually use my voice...

Nanette McGuinness  05:38

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  05:38

...quite a bit, you know." And he said, "Oh yeah, there is... there are dangers with the voice, and I said, well, tell me what the dangers are, and he was good about explaining it. And I said, well, just know that this is serious. I'm not a singer, but I do often have to speak.

Nanette McGuinness  05:53

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  05:53

And so apparently they got into the surgery, and they have a little... a small, tiny alarm that they put on the laryngeal nerve, which is the thing that helps you speak, basically. And part of the way through the procedure, the alarm went off.

Nanette McGuinness  06:09

Oh.

Jennifer Higdon  06:09

And so they stopped the surgery and brought in a vocal specialist in the surgical unit, and they were looking at it, and they decided that they should only remove half of my thyroid.

Jennifer Higdon  06:22

Wow!

Jennifer Higdon  06:22

...really kind of a strange thing because, and it took like six hours for them to do this. This it was a it was a longer than it should have been...

Nanette McGuinness  06:30

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  06:31

...but they realized that they may had damaged the vocal cords. And sure enough, when I woke up, I had no voice and... it was... and it is a danger of any kind of thyroid surgery. I mean, it's I've known people who have had this, and they they never got their voice back, or the the tenor of their voice changed. So what they ended up doing was only removing half of it, thinking that they might go back and remove the other half. The really weird part of this is that normally in that instance, you have to go on some sort of medicine you take for the rest of your life to balance what the thyroid cannot make. But my thyroid numbers went back to normal, so they had never seen anything like it. But I didn't have my voice for like it was six or seven weeks, and it was it was hard. It was really hard. And the other weird aspect of this is I had an orchestra premiere, I think three weeks after the surgery.

Jennifer Higdon  06:43

I mean, it's I've known people who have had this, and they, they never got their voice back, or the, the tenor of their voice changed. So what they ended up doing was only removing half of it, thinking that they might go back and remove the other half. The really weird part of this is that normally in that instance, you have to go on some sort of medicine you take for the rest of your life to balance...

Nanette McGuinness  06:59

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  07:03

Sure.

Jennifer Higdon  07:04

...what the thyroid cannot make. But my thyroid numbers went back to normal.

Nanette McGuinness  07:08

[laughs]

Jennifer Higdon  07:10

So they had never seen anything like it. But I didn't have my voice for like... it was six or seven weeks, and it was it, was hard. It was really hard. And the other weird aspect of this is I had an orchestra premiere, I think three weeks after the surgery.

Nanette McGuinness  07:26

[laughs] Wow!

Jennifer Higdon  07:27

And I know, again, something I didn't have any control over. But we had we had looked at my calendar to find basically a five-week spot where I could have surgery and recover.

Nanette McGuinness  07:40

Ah.

Jennifer Higdon  07:40

Not then... I didn't think I was going to lose my voice, but you know it was a danger. But my schedule is always so busy that if I have any procedure done, I have to literally go through my calendar and book it six or seven months in advance, where I can keep...

Nanette McGuinness  07:54

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  07:54

...basically things off of that time period, but give me enough time to recover.

Nanette McGuinness  07:59

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  08:00

So, but not having a voice for that time and going through the... the orchestra premiere was like impossible because I was having to do everything by, with my hands signing, like trying to emphasize simple things like down bows, and the conductor was not paying attention to what he was doing and I could tell that the musicians are confused, but there was literally nothing I could do about it. There was just, and I realized I had to let it go and let them get through the thing. It was not a great performance, but it was frustrating. And you know, I... I could tell people were concerned. It was really affecting my mood. By the time we hit the third, four week, because they usually say if you hit six or eight weeks, and your voice has not come back. It's not coming back. That's what they...

Nanette McGuinness 08:45

Scary, scary

Jennifer Higdon  08:45

...they tell you, and so people were so sweet. They kept saying to me, "You know, if you don't get your voice back, it's okay because we understand you from your music." And I... I was thinking that's not good enough. I have to be able to get in there and coach these things and ask people questions when I'm writing the pieces. But weirdly, it literally at the six week mark. It suddenly one evening I felt something pop in my throat and the sound started coming back, and it was the same sound. It was the same sound as my voice before.

Nanette McGuinness  09:20

Wow.

Jennifer Higdon  09:21

So it was...

Nanette McGuinness  09:22

Lucky.

Jennifer Higdon  09:22

It was... yeah, and I have to confess, the first time I talked to the doctor on the phone, they were so shocked that my voice had come back. That's when I learned that they thought it would not. That they thought it was permanently gone. They were like, "Your voice?!" I'm like, "Yeah, it is my voice." They're like, "No, you don't understand this...

Nanette McGuinness  09:23

[laughs]

Jennifer Higdon  09:27

So it was kind of sweet. Was really, but what a headache! And I have to confess, I didn't think anything about setting texts or anything.

Nanette McGuinness  09:50

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  09:50

However, I, when I was writing my first opera, which was before this operation, I would sing through all of the texts.

Nanette McGuinness  09:58

Ah.

Jennifer Higdon  09:58

I'm terrible at singing. But it helped me to write the music, and so when I when I started writing after all this happened, and I was writing art songs, I suddenly realized I can't... I still am not really able to sing. I just, my voice cracks at all kinds of...

Nanette McGuinness  10:15

Weird places.

Jennifer Higdon  10:15

...weird places and it's not consistent. And I, I just lose my voice. Really, I become so fatigued sometimes after a series of residency visits where I'm doing a lot of talking. So, but I value the voice. Let me just say, it's nothing I take for granted. And even if I if the voice had stayed gone, I still would have written songs. I would have... I don't think it would have altered that. I would have had to just kind of alter the way I was thinking about it, so I'm glad I could try things out even in a crackly voice. But it's a... boy, you can't take that stuff for granted. It doesn't take much to throw the body, the brain off.

Nanette McGuinness  10:53

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  10:53

It's like composing. You know, you could throw your composing off too if you're not being careful about how you make the decisions in your life to... to write. I know a lot of people wait to the summer to write, and they struggle for two months trying to get back into the swing of it. And they're getting ready to start school and they're in panic. So...

Nanette McGuinness  11:10

Oh.

Jennifer Higdon  11:11

...it's really... So, I like the fact that I I write like pretty much every day.

Nanette McGuinness  11:11

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  11:11

That, that's for me. It kind of keeps everything working. But this was a... a good reminder that your body is a part of the process.

Nanette McGuinness  11:25

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  11:25

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  11:26

Yeah. That's like I guess... Well, first, it's a miracle, and thank goodness, and...

Jennifer Higdon  11:30

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  11:30

...so lucky that it happened. But it reminds me of what they say about writers. There's that saying that you have to sit down, and the best way to be a good writer is...

Jennifer Higdon  11:42

Yeah.

Nanette McGuinness  11:42

...sit in your chair and write every day. So...

Jennifer Higdon  11:45

And that's how inspiration... If you sit down, the inspiration will show up if you're sitting down. If you're not sitting down working on it, the inspiration doesn't really show up. That's the... the thing. So the consistency, because in effect, you're still training your brain every time you sit down. It's just like a pianist...

Nanette McGuinness  12:01

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  12:02

...practicing every day. We're just doing it primarily in the brain, and it means that you're exercising your instrument...

Nanette McGuinness  12:10

Right.

Jennifer Higdon  12:10

...which is the thing putting the notes on the page and thinking about text. And that's it's just it's more important than people realize. The kind of stopping and going. I mean, I've seen this with students and colleagues. If they get jammed up and they can't write, they've got bigger problems getting back into it. So...

Nanette McGuinness  12:29

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  12:30

If you keep those muscles working all the time, it's probably pretty much like a voice. It's really it. It everything just flows much easier. So, and it it continues to grow, I think, because I'm I never really stop writing. I haven't had creative blocks. I think it's because I'm just always writing.

Nanette McGuinness  12:48

Makes sense, and maybe because you're just a really creative person. Okay.

Jennifer Higdon  12:52

Yeah, I could be. Yeah, that's true. I guess so. [laughing]

Nanette McGuinness  12:56

But...

Jennifer Higdon  12:56

I definitely need it though. It keeps my sanity intact.

Nanette McGuinness  13:00

And you know, and for the the young and emerging composers who are listening, that's really good advice.

Jennifer Higdon  13:06

Yeah, it really is. I mean, the more you can write, the quicker you can find your own personal voice as a composer.

Nanette McGuinness  13:13

Yeah, in today's composition, where one can go in so many different directions, and the palette that one has available...

Jennifer Higdon  13:21

It's huge.

Nanette McGuinness  13:22

...of all the centuries, yeah. So if you don't have your own voice, you're not gonna... you're not going to sound like you and make yourself heard above the noise.

Jennifer Higdon  13:30

Right. And you know that, honestly, this is the number one question I get from young composers: "How do I find my personal voice?"

Nanette McGuinness  13:37

mmhmm

Jennifer Higdon  13:38

The trick is just to keep writing because usually composers, when they're starting out, their music sounds like some other composer that they admire.

Nanette McGuinness  13:45

Yeah.

Jennifer Higdon  13:45

And it's not until you've gotten that out of your system you keep writing that your own characteristics, your own choices start to become a consistent thing, and that's what will become your voice.

Nanette McGuinness  13:57

That makes a lot of sense.

Nanette McGuinness  13:59

[OUTRO MUSIC] Thank you for listening to For Good Measure, and a special thank you to our guest Jennifer Higdon for joining us today. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast by clicking on the subscribe button and support us by sharing it with your friends, posting about it on social media and leaving us a rating and a review. To learn more about E4TT, our concert season online and in the Bay Area, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit us at www.E4TT.org. This podcast is made possible by grants from the California Arts Council, the San Francisco Arts Commission, Grants for the Arts, and generous donors like you. For Good Measure is produced by Nanette McGuinness and Ensemble for These Times, and design by Brennan Stokes, with special thanks to Co-producer and Audio Engineer Stephanie M. Neumann. Remember to keep supporting equity in the arts and tune in next week "for good measure." [OUTRO MUSIC ENDS]