Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music and flautist. Higdon was born in Brooklyn, but spent her first 10 years in Atlanta before moving to Tennessee. With almost no advanced flute training, she studied at Bowling Green State University towards a degree in flute performance. While at Bowling Green she met Robert Spano, who was teaching a conducting course there; Spano would go on to be the foremost champion of Higdon's music in the American orchestral community. Higdon then obtained a master's degree and doctoral degree in composition from the University of Pennsylvania under the tutelage of George Crumb. She then earned an Artist's Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, where she studied with David Loeb. Higdon now teaches composition at the Curtis Institute. She is also serving as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Composer-in-Residence in 2005-2006. Her musical style uses elements of traditional tonality and a rudimentary reworking of octatonic scales. In 2002, Higdon received two commissions from major symphonies; her Concerto for Orchestra was commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra and City Scape by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Blue Cathedral, a one-movement tone poem dealing with the death of her brother, Andrew Blue, has quickly become the most performed modern orchestral piece; it was performed by over 50 major American symphonies in the 2004-2005 concert season.