Jessie Montgomery
Through the Amplifying Voices program, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, New Jersey Symphony, and Seattle Symphony is proud to co-commission composer Jessie Montgomery.
Co-commissioners: Dallas Symphony Orchestra (lead), Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, and Seattle Symphony
Bio:
Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. In May 2021, she began a three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). Some recent highlights from her growing body of work include Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for Soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival; I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance; Shift, Change, Turn (2019) commissioned by the Orpheus and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestras, Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta, and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—for The Sphinx Organization and the Joyce Foundation, which had its UK premiere at the BBC Proms on 7 August 2021. Since 1999, Jessie has been affiliated with The Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi. Jessie holds degrees from the Juilliard School and New York University and is currently a PhD Candidate in Music Composition at Princeton University. She is Professor of violin and composition at The New School.
Vigorous Tenderness: a vernal equinox concert
Wells Reserve at Laudholm
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Noontime Lenten Concerts
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church; Decorah, IA
Chou Wen-Chung Centennial Concert
Miller Theatre at Columbia University