Music alumnus publishes Higdon Monograph

Christina L. Reitz, (MM and Ph.D., UF) published her first monograph on the music of Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning composer, Jennifer Higdon with the publisher McFarland and Company.  Reitz's dissertation with Dr. David Z. Kushner, Professor Emeritus, was based on Higdon's select orchestral works; the current book includes compositional history, analysis, and critical reception of the Pulitzer Prize winning Violin Concerto composed for Hilary Hahn, Concerto 4-3, and Higdon's first opera, Cold Mountain based on the award winning novel of the same name by Charles Frazier.  Marin Alsop, Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, who has worked extensively with Higdon contributed the foreword.  While at UF, Dr. Reitz's primary mentors were Dr. Kushner and Dr. Kevin R. Orr with whom she studied piano; as a graduate assistant in historical musicology, she received the Outstanding Student Paper Award from the College Music Society, Southern Chapter.   Dr. Reitz is currently Associate Professor of Music at Western Carolina University and has been published in the Grove Dictionary of American Music, Journal of Library Administration, Journal of International Alliance for Women in Music, and is currently contributing a chapter on Pulitzer Prize winner, Caroline Shaw, for the second edition of Women Making Art: Women in the Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts since 1960 through Peter Lang, Inc publications.