Jessie Montgomery

Composer Jessie Montgomery has merged classical traditions with vernacular music of various types, often with an emphasis on social justice. She also performs chamber music and is a noted educator. Montgomery was born on December 8, 1981, in New York. Her father, Ed Montgomery, was a composer, and her mother, Robbie McCauley, was a playwright. Montgomery was raised in a highly creative neighborhood environment where she was exposed to various artistic and political movements. She attended the Juilliard School, earning a bachelor's degree in violin performance, and went on to New York University. There, she received a bachelor's degree in composition for film and multimedia in 2012. By that time, she had already been involved for some years with the Sphinx Organization, a Detroit group that seeks to further the careers of young African American and Latin American string players and composers. Montgomery received several grants from the group and has served as its composer-in-residence. For the first part of her career, Montgomery mixed performing and teaching; she formed the PUBLIQuartet string ensemble in 2010 and was also a member of the Catalyst Quartet while teaching at Community MusicWorks in Providence, Rhode Island. Montgomery has increasingly focused on composition, often mixing classical elements with contemporary pop and folk styles and world traditions. Her 2014 work Banner merged The Star-Spangled Banner with protest songs and other anthems from around the world. Montgomery's works have been performed by the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and, abroad, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London. She has been the recipient of commissions from organizations as diverse as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. By the mid-2020s, more than a dozen of her compositions had been recorded, and her work was the focus of the 2023 Azica recording Jessie Montgomery: Strum - Music for Strings.
© James Manheim /TiVo