<P> Jennifer Higdon (born December 31, 1962) is an American composer of classical music and composition teacher . She has received many awards including the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Music for her Violin Concerto and a 2009 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition for her Percussion Concerto . </P> <P> Jennifer Higdon was born in Brooklyn, New York . She spent the first 10 years of her life in Atlanta, Georgia before moving to Seymour, Tennessee . Largely self - taught, she played flute in her high school's concert band and percussion in marching band, but heard little classical music before her college years . She studied flute performance at Bowling Green State University with Judith Bentley, who encouraged her to explore composition . During her time at Bowling Green, she wrote her first composition, a two - minute piece for flute and piano named Night Creatures . Of playing in the university orchestra, she has said: "Because I came to classical music very differently than most people, the newer stuff had more appeal for me than the older ." While at Bowling Green she met Robert Spano, who was teaching a conducting course there and who became one of the champions of Higdon's music in the American orchestral community . </P>

Contemporary female composer who has won the pulitzer prize in the 20th or 21st century