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Jessie Montgomery is enjoying the kind of moment in the spotlight that every rising composer dreams of.
The 40-year-old Brooklyn native began a three-year stint last fall as Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. In April, the ensemble presented the world premiere of Hymn for Everyone, which the CSO commissioned. ’
In September, the New York Times profiled the multifaceted creator in a piece titled “The Changing American Canon Sounds Like Jessie Montgomery,” which hailed her “often personal yet widely resonant music — forged in Manhattan, a mirror turned on the whole country.”
Her first piano concerto, Rounds, was premiered in March by pianist Awadagin Pratt and the Hilton Head Symphony, which was part of a commissioning consortium of orchestras in Baltimore, Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Kansas City, Mo.
“It’s been a big year,” she said. And that momentum shows no signs of slowing down.
In addition to her work as a composer, Montgomery is also a violinist, activist and educator. She will draw on all four career facets, especially the last, from June 27 through July 1, when she serves as composer-in-residence at the Ravinia Festival’s Steans Music Institute, one of the nation’s most sought-after summer training programs. She will meet informally with this year’s 38 young professional piano and string musicians and coach 10 of them in three of her chamber works, Source Code (2013), Break Away (2013) and Peace (2020–22), which the participating musicians will perform in a free concert on July 2. at Bennett Gordon Hall (the performance also will be live-streamed at ravinia.org).
“Having a direct line of communication between the composer and the music and the performer is a special thing,” she said. “I want to be able to participate in that, and the best way to do that is by teaching.”
Montgomery was selected as this summer’s composer-in-residence by Miriam Fried, the respected violinist and pedagogue who has been the director of the Steans Institute’s Piano & Strings Program for nearly 30 years. When two of her students at the New England Conservatory chose to learn a piece by Montgomery that Fried didn’t know, she was taken with it. “She had a real flair for finding sounds on the instrument that I found very interesting,” Fried said. “I was intrigued, and I went and looked up what was available [by Montgomery].”
While Montgomery sees a more equitable mix of composers being showcased in the classical world and more groups taking a socially conscious approach to the artists they present, there still remain varying levels of commitment to inclusion and diversity. On positive side, she has been impressed, for example, by the long-term commitment that the Chicago Symphony Orchestra has made to her, giving her a residency of three years and agreeing to commission three major orchestral works and some chamber music. Over all, despite continuing challenges, she is optimistic about the direction of change in the field.
“In general, I tend to focus on the positives,” she said. “That’s just my thing in life.”
This is an excerpt of a feature published on the Ravinia Festival’s Backstage blog. For the complete article, click on the red tab below.
