“Jessie Montgomery’s Starburst (2012) – all the above strings players plus violinists Melissa White, Nathan Amaral and Graham Mitchell, violist Rosalind Ventris and bassist Graham Mitchell – sounded as per…
“Divided (2020) is Jessie Montgomery’s response to the sense of helplessness felt in ‘a world that seems to be in constant crisis’. Cast as a compact cello concerto – the…
“The music is new, but it’s rooted in classical traditions, and it’s fascinating to hear compositional voices that routinely push forward, earnestly engaging in traditional approaches. On Jessie Montgomery’s stirring…
“The first music on this new disc is by Jessie Montgomery, the Mead Composer-in-residence at the CSO. She has earned a reputation as a composer of melodic, accessible music infused…
“Pratt handed each of his composers some lines from Eliot’s poem as a jumping-off point. Jessie Montgomery’s Rounds, which opens the album, already has a life of its own — Pratt…
“Look to the opening work on the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s recent album “Contemporary American Composers,” Jessie Montgomery’s ‘Hymn for Everyone.’ That track is plenty inviting in its regular stereo mix;…
“Written in 2021 for viola and orchestra and featuring violist Masumi Per Rostad, Montgomery’s piece was the concert’s highlight, heard in its local premiere. She is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s…
“Divided, by Jessie Montgomery, is the other Sphinx commission for the album, with Tommy Mesa providing a stirring performance of the solo cello part. Montgomery draws the main motive out of the…
Songs of Our Times includes two of Sphinx Virtuosi’s commissions. Composer Jessie Montgomery describes Divided as a response to “the sense of helplessness that people seem to feel amidst a…
“Rising-star composer Montgomery, who was involved in last year’s 75th anniversary Music Academy festival and who is currently the Mead composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony, managed the feat of supplying…
“The commission was followed by Jessie Montgomery’s “Five Freedom Songs,” an orchestral song cycle built on the stirring texts of five traditional Black spirituals, each of them in different ways…
“For the Sunday afternoon audience, the widely admired composer and educator Jessie Montgomery previewed her 2021 “Freedom Songs,” a collection of lesser-known traditional Black spirituals adapted for voice, percussion and…
“Montgomery’s ‘Banner,’ from 2014, ingeniously casts a string quartet as the individual “soloist” both vigorously supported by and at times vigorously challenged by the collective in the form of the…
“The evening began with Montgomery’s Strum, an all-strings affair, with plucked and strummed violins producing stunning layers of rhythmic and harmonic ostinati. Having grown up on New York’s Lower East…
“The dance theme of the evening got off to a lively start with Strum, a folk music inspired work by New York composer Jessie Montgomery, its title coming from the…
”Montgomery’s neatly constructed single-movement work opens with a hopeful rising and falling five-note melody, which hovers around the fifth of the scale before resting on a turn-like figure. The work…
“With the brand-new Contemporary American Composers (CSO Resound), his last album with the CSO in his official capacity, [Riccardo Muti] gives his critics a decisive shove. This remarkable album opens…
“The sounds of new and old within the orchestra are kept under careful watch, although at times they form an uneasy alliance, which is probably the point: It’s precisely that…
“‘Ambitious’ seems too light an adjective to describe their work, which injects “Treemonisha” with a timeless universality and adds complex themes of self-hate, Black identity and intergenerational trauma… Jessie Montgomery…
“The same stirring chorale writing and piquant instrumental pairings from last year’s “Hymn for Everyone” abound here. That may not be a coincidence. “Transfigure to Grace” adapts material from Montgomery’s…
