Jessie Montgomery

By: LaToya Cross

Music is an archive of human existence and experience.  

And it is through music, as a Grammy-award winning violinist and composer, that Jessie Montgomery creates narratives that ignite thought, rush you with playfulness, and invite you to imagine.  

Creating from a place of self-honor, Montgomery’s ability to weave classical with cultural music, improvisation, dance, and poetry can segue from reflections on socio-cultural moments and identities to scenes filled with joy. The foundational bedding in Montgomery’s interdisciplinary works is her ability to waken senses with whimsical spontaneity and lightness.  

“Whimsy keeps me alert and excited,” says Montgomery. “I like the element of surprise, and it helps to pace things in the music; it’s very much part of my process and attitude toward music,” she continues. “Writing for orchestra, there are so many opportunities for storytelling and ways that you can weave references to different styles.” 

Her style, across orchestras, ensembles, and as a soloist is eclectic, bold, and innovative –– aptly described by The Washington Post as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life.” 

True.  

“Everything that Jessie writes works so well for the instruments. I’m constantly learning so much,” expressed composer Missy Mazzoli in an interview co-produced by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Association and WFMT. “You have this feeling that it’s all coming from this very honest place of wanting to do something that is uniquely hers; and she does it. It’s a beautiful experience every time.” 

A multi-hyphenate artist, Montgomery is the architect of her musical journey:  

She is a founding member of PUBLIQuartet and The Blacknificent 7, a collective of Black composers using music as a form of social activism; in June 2024 she completed a three-year-appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence; and she is the recipient of prestigious awards and fellowships including the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence, the ASCAP Foundation’s Leonard Bernstein Award, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year—this is an abbreviated list.   

Currently, she is deep in her role as creator of the Young Composers Initiative in Chicago, which supports high school aged youth in creating and presenting their works. The initiative includes tutorials, reading sessions, and public performances. This year’s cohort will culminate with a performance by musicians from the Civic Orchestra of Chicago in May.  

“Mentorship and teaching always makes me feel inspired and is an opportunity to see where the young professionals are on their path,” she says. “It gives me hope to watch these young minds at work, challenging themselves and venturing into discovering new works on their own.”  

This season, we lift Montgomery’s contributions to the evolution of classical music as a 2025 Classical Roots artistic honoree. 

COLOR AND BALANCE

Born to parents who were always involved in music, theater, and education in New York, the feeling of community developed early for Montgomery (a self-described quiet kid who liked to watch), and the concept of leading an artful life on your own terms, was a reality she witnessed daily.  

There were early moments of seeing her dad sitting at their home piano writing an opera––a visual that she imitated and would influence her to begin composing in high school. There are memories of watching her mother from backstage at a theatre or being with her parents at a music hall. Music and people filled their home.  

“I always observed that being an artist and making your life as an artist was a normal thing; something to aspire to. The number of people that were always involved in activities and the reach they had; I found that impressive,” she says. “That influenced my sense of how to be in a community and how to influence people around the world with your work; it became foundational to my understanding of how to be in the world, and a way of creating community around what you do.” 

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Engaging with different art forms can spark ideation and serve as inspiration to create anew. Montgomery’s attraction to storytelling across artistic disciplines often shows up in her works through poetry and dance collaborations. 

“Exploration is very enriching to my sense of meaning and storytelling in my own music; I find that it inspires other ways of thinking about music, when I can collaborate with other mediums, and it enriches my sense of timing and pacing,” she says. “It also gives me another perspective on how we communicate as humans.” 

These intersections were explored with the Dance Theatre of Harlem and choreographer Claudia Schreier in the ballet Passage (2020), which served as a reflection on the fortitude of the human spirit and was performed in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619. 

Of the collaboration, Schreier expressed, “[Jessie] has this gorgeous, lyrical, flowing quality to everything that she does. It’s such a special quality for composers, especially in this era.” 

In 2021, her work with Bard SummerScape and choreographer-in-residence Pam Tanowitz resulted in I was waiting for the echo of a better day, a site-specific dance with live music. The performance took place on the historic Montgomery Place parkland against the backdrop of the Hudson River as a call to “gather on this land and pay tribute to what came before.”   

Rounds, which earned Montgomery the 2024  GRAMMY® Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition and is  featured on this year’s Classical Roots program with pianist Awadagin Pratt, evokes themes and imagery from T.S. Eliot’s epic Four Quartets––specifically the first poem, Burnt Norton, that contemplates interconnectedness and its requirement of us to slow down, listen, and observe.   

Lately, the poetry of James DePreist, one of the first African American conductors on the world stage and author of A Distant Siren has been serving inspiration. “It’s a clarity he has, something very poignant about the word choices. In a short, concise moment, you can hear and feel the musicality and sincerity of each contemplation,” Montgomery says. “I just find it brilliantly fresh.” 

Collectively, these bodies of work speak to concepts that often show up in Montgomery’s compositions: community, ritual, and gathering––with music as the nucleus for togetherness. 

“There are ways in which music and people gather, it happens in different ways for different people and cultures. But when you put them all in the same place, we all sort of find common ground with each other,” she analyzes. “That type of connection is what I’m seeking in my art––creating the conditions wherein those things can happen.” 

SNAPSHOTS

Music creates poignant moments. Melodic instrumentation can swing feelings from despair to hope, turmoil to triumph, and a tear to a smile.  

With Snapshots, a DSO co-commission featured on the Classical Roots program, Montgomery describes the aesthetic as a “melding of styles and points of view.”  

Within the four-movement composition are distinctive, imaginative vignettes that play as “a flash of all these different ideas and experiences coming together. You’ll find in the piece that they explore a wide range of orchestration colors from cinematic to really intimate writing,” she shares. “The bigger orchestration has driving rhythms that I think are evocative of the frenetic energy of being in a big city.” 

Though the work is not a direct connection to the composer’s Lower East Side Manhattan upbringing during the 1980s, an era she expresses as “chaotic” but bursting with art and creativity, there are moments that play as a loose representation. 

“There’s this urban beauty that is unique to the people that have lived in this neighborhood and have made art in reflection of this neighborhood,” she says. “So, there’s influences of families and then there’s street art, graffiti, hip hop, folk songs, and dance. All those things are in the aesthetic of the experience and the music.” 

The final movement draws on her early influences of film music, an homage to Ravel and Debussy’s string quartets, where mood, atmosphere, light depictions, and color were focal.  

IN GRATITUDE

The Classical Roots celebration amplifies the voices and presence of African Americans who have contributed, shaped, shifted, redefined, and made possible what classical music spaces can sound and look like.  

“Classical Roots is essential,” Montgomery says. “We need to keep reminding people that Black history and Black music, and Black culture is American history and culture. It’s about honesty, truth-telling and the stories we need to tell. We need these spaces and moments to acknowledge and reflect on that; as long as we’re on the planet, we’re going to tell our story.” 

From the artsy streets of New York to the worldwide stage, Jessie Montgomery is shifting traditional expectations of classical music; and she’s doing it her way while lifting voices of now and tomorrow.  

“I’m motivated to continue to make art the way I choose to and allow my voice to grow and go where I want it to go,” she says. “I feel grateful that I have arrived at a place where I’m steering the ship whichever way I want from here on out.”