The Changing American Canon looks like Jessie Montgomery


The history of classical music in the United States has long been one of identity crisis: the search for an indigenous sound independent of European influence. This concern manifested repeatedly as self-sabotage, with some composers—almost always white men—glorified as groundbreaking, while truly original works from artists of color were ignored.

That has changed in recent years: suddenly, with the wave of Black Lives Matter demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd. Classical institutions collectively made serious, sometimes clumsy, but endeavors rise to the moments and pay undue attention to marginal composers who always have answers to the question of America’s musical identity.

One of the composers that the field specifically refers to is Jessie Montgomery, whose often personal but widely resonant music – beaten in Manhattan, mirrored the entire country – will be hard to miss next season.

Publishing representative Philip Rothman said Montgomery’s orchestral works more than doubled each year from 2017 to 2020. (And this is just one corner of his output.) A few years ago that number was about 20; In 2021, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, St. It is expected to be about 400, including the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra. And it’s full of very future-proof commissions, including its calendar. New composer of Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Some of the limelight in Montgomery is a product of pandemic restrictions; many ensembles have made cautious comebacks with small-diameter spring pieces at the heart of their work. But his rapid prominence is also the result of orchestras reworking their repertoire to include composers of color more prominently – an achievement that can sometimes feel like a burden for a single artist to speak for an entire race or nation.

Still, a new portrait of the American sound has emerged as Montgomery’s music provides some of the latest, important touches.

“It drastically changes the canon of American orchestras,” said Afa S. Dworkin, president and artistic director of the Sphinx Organization, which promotes racial and ethnic diversity in music. “The true language of American classical music is something that will distinguish our canon and is shaping its evolution.”

MONGOMERY, 40, He is the son of artistic parents of the Lower East Side. His mother, Robbie McCauleymade theater that questioned the nation’s racial history; her father, Edward Montgomery, ran a studio where young Jessie sometimes manually operated the elevator for jazz, punk, and opera musicians.

With Montgomery studying violin in a room; his father composes another song; and while her mother was rehearsing or writing in a home studio, their apartment had the feel of an artist residence. “There was no routine,” Montgomery said in a recent interview. “Everyone was doing their own thing in their own modules. But I was always in awe.”

He was exposed to his parents’ downtown environment at an early age, learning violin techniques and repertoire suited to both the city center and the world of improvisation.

Montgomery’s teacher, Alice Kanack, recalls that she “created these improv games with the philosophy that each child has their own individual, innate, creative voice and should be encouraged when they are young.” These plays provided a natural segue for composing and started in earnest at age 11.

In the 1990s, Montgomery was a serious student and spent nights with his friends in Queens raving about house music and hip-hop; He said it was “a lot of drugs”. But the violin was a kind of salvation for him and he followed him to the Juilliard School. (Leaving the city was never out of the question because “I was still in my head that there was no other place like New York,” he said.)

Violin also plays Montgomery The annual competition of the Sphinx Organization. It was the first time he had been asked to play a piece by a Black composer.

“I lived in New York, so I was used to having different cultures in my group of friends all the time,” Montgomery said. “So that wasn’t unusual. But it was all Black and Latino kids. And how we all stay in touch and keep collaborating with each other is really the strength of the organization.”

Associated with the Sphinx for years, he performed in the Sphinx Virtuosos chamber group and eventually formed a relationship that led to teaching at the Sphinx Performance Academy, receiving the organization’s medal of excellence shortly before the pandemic.

“Jessie was a beautiful chamber musician from the very beginning,” Dworkin said. “Then he had a voice as a composer. A few years later I realized it was the other side.”

There was also a third side to his art: teaching. Shortly after graduating from Juilliard, she joined Community MusicWorks in Providence, RI—inspired in part by her own education at the Third Street Music School Settlement in New York City and her mother’s community-based practice.

“I use the word precision a lot, but I think what makes something valuable is the amount of rigor, the amount of focus. The amount of energy you put into it is what really matters,” he said. “They were the first in their family to go to college, and I’ve seen some of them change,” he added to the Ivy Leagues. It was intense but beautiful.”

Throughout his career, Montgomery has tried to balance pedagogy with performance and composition—with mixed success for sanity. He was a founding member of the PUBLIQuartet chamber group and later joined the Catalyst Quartet.

“When Jessie joined, Catalyst was just what we always imagined it to be,” said Karla Donehew Perez, a violinist friend in the band.

Catalyst became a sounding board for Montgomery’s writings. for the 2015 album “Strum: Music for Strings” the group recorded some of his most played works: the spiritually influenced “Source Code”; live “Strum”; and “Banner,” which deconstructs and builds on the American national anthem. The quartet with Imani Winds also premiered the nonnet “Sergeant McCauley” about one of Montgomery’s great-grandfathers and the Great Migration.

The Catalyst actors have also taken on major projects together – most recently, “The Covered” series dedicates her albums to composers who are overlooked because of their race or gender. But Montgomery felt that the quartet, which he described as “24/7, 365 attention,” was increasingly unable to take the time he needed from him.

“It doesn’t feel balanced in the quartet,” he said, “especially when they’re performing my pieces, and I see the benefit of that.”

Last year, Montgomery announced she was leaving Catalyst—a difficult decision made for a tense conversation. “It’s not a completely repaired relationship,” he said, “but mostly it’s repaired.” (Donehew Perez said Montgomery was like a family member to him and continued to be “the perfect, lifelong friend.”)

Montgomery continues to perform, including as part of the improv duo Big Dog Small Dog, with bassist Eleonore Oppenheim. She also played her music at the Pam Tanowitz dance premiere. “I was waiting for the echo of a better day” He is working on a new joint project this summer, with exploratory rehearsals starting in September.

But the bulk of her future work – with commissions currently scheduled through 2024 – will be writing that reflects her upbringing, embracing a spirit of improvisation, a wide variety of influences, and a preoccupation with personal history.

“I have the idea that there is something beyond fusion in my head,” Montgomery said. “There is another sound that I think is the culmination of different styles and influences coming together. I don’t know if I’ve succeeded yet.”

Observers may disagree; composer Joan Tower has described Montgomery’s music as a mix of “true self-confidence” and “consistently intertwining” references. And Alex Hanna, principal bassist of the Chicago Symphony, noted the “richness of sound and color” in his notes.

You get the feeling that he wrote the music in one afternoon because it has the honesty of improvisation.

Works such as “Source Code”, “Sergeant McCauley” and the recently premiered “Five Freedom Songs”, soprano Julia BullockDworkin reflects on the fact that Montgomery is “a multiethnic person who lives, breathes and tells all-American stories.”

“Banner,” he added, is a “shining” example. “There’s music borrowed from the Mexican anthem, Puerto Rican, blues and jazz idioms galore. That is American music and American history.”

But trying to capture the soul of a country with music is a level of pressure Montgomery tries to avoid when considering a new commission. He said he doesn’t see his work as particularly political.

“I think people sometimes see Blackness or a reflection of Blackness as a political expression, being Black is embodying politics and culture within yourself,” he said. “And it’s actually a burden.”

A burden that has been particularly acute over the past year. “I was talking to my black colleagues, and we all feel like this kind of thing is being worn,” she said. “I realized there was a common desire to be able to create without that kind of pressure or expectation that racing or classical music would be better or more diverse or whatever it was to be its spokesperson.”

He wants to see programmers not only hire Black artists, but do so thoughtfully and flexibly. “A commission that addresses injustices towards Black people as a way of accepting or confronting the institution’s own complicity in atrocities against Blacks does not allow the composer in question to express complete joy, for example,” he said. “It boils down to the simple fact that black people – possibly any people – want to have our own narrative and don’t have to be held accountable for undoing corporate crimes.”

In his own music production, Montgomery is more concerned with supporting his peers through his actions—as a curator, artist, or pedagogue—rather than public statements.

“I think the study shows what you want to show,” he said. “And that’s the point. First comes the work, then comes the statements.”



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