The Singing Rooms
The Singing Rooms is a concerto for solo violin, choir, and orchestra by the American composer Jennifer Higdon. The work was jointly commissioned by the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, and the Minnesota Orchestra. It was first performed on January 17, 2008 in Philadelphia by the violinist Jennifer Koh, The Philadelphia Singers, and the Philadelphia Orchestra under the conductor Christoph Eschenbach. The text of the piece is set to poems by Jeanne Minahan. The piece was most recently done in March 2019 at the Kimmel Center for Performing Arts in Philadelphia by the Temple University Choirs  and Orchestra, with a featured violin soloist. Composition. Text. When first commissioned to write a violin concerto with a choral element, Higdon began searching for poetry on which to set the composition. She wrote in the score program notes: Structure. "The Singing Rooms" has a duration of roughly 37 minutes and is composed in seven movements set to the text of poems by Jeanne Minahan: Instrumentation. The work is scored for solo violin, SATB chorus, and an orchestra comprising two flutes, two oboes (2nd doubling English horn), two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, three trumpets (1st doubling piccolo trumpet), three  trombones, tuba, harp, timpani, two percussionists, and strings. Reception. Howard Goldstein of "BBC Music Magazine" praised "The Singing Rooms", writing, "Higdon [...] often lets the poems take a backseat to the concerto-like solo violin part (beautifully played by Jennifer Koh), resulting in a lavishness of musical gesture occasionally at odds with the intimate subject matter." Bradley Bambarger of "The Star-Ledger" compared the work favorably to Higdon's Violin Concerto, despite noting that "it still tends to be melodically anodyne."