Song Festival to premiere third commissioned work, this one an ode to summertime

“It was surreal. I cried,” said Higdon, who also has a trio of Grammys to her credit. “I think every musician I know cries when they get into the room. … I was amazed how emotional it was being in a room with live performers. … It really reminds you of how important the art is.”

Higdon and Cooke will meet for the first time next week when they premiere “Summertime Music” at Hosclaw Hall on the University of Arizona campus. But Higdon said she feels connected to Cooke after poring over her recordings to get a feel for Cooke’s voice.

“When I heard her voice I was so blown away and it made me relax in way,” Higdon said. “Her voice was so calming. It kind of reminded me of when I was younger going through summertime. …. There was a gorgeousness to it, the artistry and the phrasing; it felt so real.”

That feeling of calm informed Higdon’s composition, which draws from eight poems — three of them Higdon wrote herself — that capture the essence of the season, from the giddiness of that first summer night expressed in Sara Teasdale’s “Summer Night, Riverside,” to the final breath of the season from Thomas Moore’s “The Last Rose of Summer.”

“I wanted to celebrate the joy and breath of fresh air that you feel in summer,” she explained, from the simple joy of eating blackberries off the vine (her poem “Blackberry Oblivion”) to the “ping, pang, pong” of a summer rain (“The Rain Song,” also by Higdon).