Yet she came relatively late to music. She taught herself to play the flute at the age of fifteen. She began her musical schooling three years later. Soon, she became interested in composing. She currently teaches composition at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

VOICE ONE:

For a classically trained composer, Jennifer Higdon's musical influences might surprise you.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "The Beatles. That's probably the first influence. Lennon and McCartney, because I listened to so much of it growing up. I actually didn't grow up listening to classical music."

VOICE TWO:

She is known for choosing unusual instruments and sounds. In a recent concerto piece called "On a Wire" she had the musicians play a bowed piano. They took the hairs off the kind of bow used to play a violin or cello and placed them inside the piano, under the strings.

JENNIFER HIGDON: "It makes for this haunted sort of sound. It's a little bit like a wine glass, when you play a wine glass. It's very unusual."

VOICE ONE:

One of her more widely performed works is "blue cathedral." She says the work is a poem about the people who cross our paths in a lifetime. It was influenced by her brother's death from cancer.

(MUSIC: "blue cathedral"/Atlanta Symphony Orchestra)

VOICE TWO:

We asked Jennifer Higdon how she goes about planning a new work.