Ravinia 2022, Issue 3

PREVIOUS PAGE: TODD ROSENBERG THIS PAGE: SANDOR BODO (PROVIDENCE); KEVIN KENNEDY (SPHINX) While a resident musician at Community MusicWorks in Rhode Island from 2004 to 2009, Jessie Montgomery joined its Providence String Quartet (right), which commissioned her to write Anthem: A tribute to the historic election of Barack Obama during her final year. She continued exploring the national anthem when she became the first resident composer of the Sphinx Virtuosi in 2013 (below), writing Banner for the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Last summer it became the first work of hers heard at Ravinia. “Having a direct line of communi- cation,” Montgomery said, “between the composer and the music and the performer is a special thing. I want to be able to participate in that, and the best way to do that is by teaching.” Although the orchestral version of Source Code will be prominently performed July 29 by Ravinia Chief Conductor Marin Alsop’s latest protégé, 2022 Taki Alsop Fellow Anna Duczmal-Mróz, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as part of the mini-festival Breaking Barriers: Women on the Podium—which also features one of her latest projects, a musical adaptation of Mo Willems’s children’s story Because , commis- sioned and premiered in March by the Kennedy Center, performed by conductor Jeri Lynne Johnson and the Chicago Sinfonietta on July 31— much of Montgomery’s work during her residency is away from of view. And she is perfectly happy with that dichotomy. Teaching has been an integral part of Montgomery’s career since she finished her undergraduate stud- ies at New York’s Juilliard School and became a resident musician at Community MusicWorks, a nationally recognized music-education program in Providence, RI. In addition to hold- ing the position of professor of violin and composition at The New School in New York City, where she resides, she has also taught at the Sphinx Performance Academy, an intensive summer training program for string musicians ages 11–17 with an emphasis on cultural diversity. “Teaching is the way that you ensure the connection to the future,” she said. Growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Montgomery started taking violin lessons when she was 4 at the Third Street Music School Settlement, and a little later began writing music as well. She thought that performing would always be the central focus of her musical life, and she has been a member of several ensembles, includ- ing the Providence String Quartet, an offshoot of Community MusicWorks; PUBLIQuartet; and Catalyst Quartet, which she co-founded but had to recently leave because of increasing demands on her as a composer. Each of these groups not only served as the outlet and impetus for her music but they exposed audiences to her work and raised her visibility as a composer. The big turning point for her was Strum , which has gone through several iterations starting in 2006. Originally conceived as a cello quintet, a final version for string quartet was completed in 2012 and premiered by the Catalyst Quartet, which went on to record it three years later as part of an album of Mont- gomery’s best-known works to that point. The piece, which has also been arranged for string orchestra, caught on with other groups, and it has be- come her most frequently performed work so far. “Turbulent, wildly colorful, and ex- ploding with life, Strum sounded like a handful of American folk melodies tossed into a strong wind, cascading and tumbling joyfully around one another,” wrote music critic Stephen Brookes in a Washington Post review of the Catalyst Quartet in 2012. “Wildly colorful and exploding with life” is a good description of much of Montgomery’s writing, which often merges Black musical idioms— rhythms, vocal lines, and harmonic language—into the world of classical music. For fun and sometimes inspi- ration, she regularly listens to jazz, big-band music, and works by French composers—Poulenc has been a recent favorite. At the same time, she tries to stay current with the world of R&B, including such current singers as Madison McFerrin (daughter of famed cross-genre vocalist Bobby McFerrin) and Emily King. Since she wrote Strum , Mont- gomery has turned to writing more large-scale works, including two commissions in the works for the New York Philharmonic and Dallas Symphony, and she is incorporating more open, improvised sections in her music. “I’ve always had this idea,” she said, “that there could be multiple styles happening within one piece, and I think what’s changing is that I’m getting closer to a unified sound. That’s always what I’m going for.” One of the challenges in classical music, according to Alejandra Vala- rino Boyer, the new director of the Steans Institute, is that a high percent- age of regularly performed classical compositions are by dead compos- ers. While it is possible to read their letters and peruse archival materials, it is impossible to converse directly with them. But the Steans compos- er-in-residence initiative, which dates to 1993 but has operated on a more or less regular basis since 2008, gives the participating instrumental and vocal fellows a rare chance to do just that— ask questions about original intent and interpretative possibilities. “That RAVINIA MAGAZINE • JULY 18 – JULY 31, 2022 20