NMI’s Young Composers Initiative helps to cultivate a circle of emerging voices

On a Saturday morning in early February, six teen composers gathered in Grainger Ballroom at Symphony Center for their first chance to hear professional musicians perform drafts of their new compositions. These students, who range from ages 13 to 18, are the 2024/25 participants in the Young Composers Initiative, a mentorship program created by Jessie Montgomery, during her tenure as the CSO’s Mead Composer-in-Residence, with the Negaunee Music Institute at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

In these reading sessions, members of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago — the CSO’s training program for young professional musicians — played an excerpt or a full draft of each score, allowing the composers to gauge how their choices about instrumentation, balance, dynamics and bowing techniques sound in a live performance. While each composer took the lead in working with the musicians during their respective reading, Montgomery asked questions and offered input to help guide them toward the sound they hope to create.

First up was a composition by Clara Frantzen, a second-year YCI participant who is a senior at Oak Park and River Forest High School. Inspired by Arthur Miller’s 1949 play “Death of a Salesman,” the piece features the viola in a concerto-like role, with bass, clarinet, trumpet, piano and percussion rounding out the ensemble. Reflecting Miller’s themes about the struggle to achieve the American dream, the jazz-influenced score opens in a yearning, melancholy mood before transitioning into a turbulent, percussion-heavy section and tapering off with a piano passage at the end.

“My parents are opera singers, so I’ve always been very involved in theater my whole life,” Frantzen said after the reading session. “Usually, we think of music as something that we hear, but in a performance, it’s also something that we see, so I love incorporating theater into my music.”

When Frantzen read “Death of a Salesman” several years ago, they found the play’s characters relatable and its themes relevant. “There are problems that this play calls out that still haven’t been fixed in America,” they said. “I really wanted to write about that, because if I’m going to write music, I want to say something with it.”

Now in its third season, YCI is one of the many training programs for young musicians offered by the CSO’s Negaunee Music Institute. When she began her three-year appointment as Mead Composer-in-Residence in 2021, Montgomery hoped “to cultivate a community around young composers,” she said in a recent interview. While growing up in New York, she had participated in an apprenticeship for young composers at Lincoln Center, an important step in her development as a composer. “I was drawing on some of those experiences in coming up with this program,” she said of YCI. “I wanted to be able to give back in that way.”

Applications are open to students of all abilities and experience levels who have not yet completed their senior year of high school and who live in Chicago or one of its suburbs. Applicants must submit a written personal statement, work samples and a letter of recommendation from a teacher. Montgomery then selects the participants, largely taking into account each student’s personal statement to evaluate their passion, curiosity and attention to detail.

“I also try, to the best of my ability, to create opportunities for a diverse network of students from various backgrounds,” Montgomery said. “The idea is to mix [experience] levels as well, because I like the idea of the younger students who are less experienced learning from students who are more advanced.”

Throughout the school year, each participant composes a new piece of chamber music and meets with Montgomery for five private coaching sessions. Mid-year, the whole group gathers for a day-long practicum, which includes reading sessions and composition and improvisation exercises. Concluding the program in the spring, the composers’ final pieces are performed by members of the Civic Orchestra in a public concert at Symphony Center.

Along with Frantzen, the 2024/25 participants are Marilyn Gans, Gloria Kravchenko, Christopher Mertz, Malik Ali Muhammad and Sylvia Pine. Muhammad, 17, a third-year participant who attends Muhammad University of Islam, said that the program has helped him realize the value of his unique compositional voice. “My biggest take-away is that your work isn’t supposed to sound like everybody else’s,” he said. “YCI has really given me the chance to grow as a composer.”

Kravchenko, a junior at Chicago Academy for the Arts, said of her first year in YCI: “It’s been really amazing working with Jessie Montgomery because obviously I’ve heard many of her works, but it’s been really nice getting an insight into the process behind it.” Gans, another first-year participant who is an 18-year-old homeschooler, noted that as a pianist, the program has helped her learn more about orchestration and writing for string instruments.

Pine, a 13-year-old homeschooler and second-year participant, said that leading a rehearsal is an important skill she’s developed through YCI. “I’m trying to learn how to be more confident and trying to understand more about how to explain what’s in my head to the people who are actually playing it. YCI, and Jessie in particular, have helped me do that,” she shared. “It’s just been a huge opportunity and really expanded my horizons.”

The students’ hard work will culminate in the final concert on May 23, which is free and open to the public. Last year’s performance played to a packed audience in Symphony Center’s Buntrock Hall, and a similar turnout is expected this spring — a sign of the excitement growing around this relatively new but already flourishing program.