Violinist.com Interview with Composer Jessie Montgomery

March 13, 2025, 8:26 PM · The first time I played a piece by Jessie Montgomery was in 2021. It was a busy week, and when I downloaded my second-violin part for Banner, I approached the music with the practical goal of learning all those notes in time for the first rehearsal. I put it on my music stand and practiced. I put it on my playlist and listened. My focus was utilitarian: heads up for those meter changes, fast notes with a lot of string-crossings, double-stops, some unusual bowing styles ("battuto..").

I had the vague sense that it sounded familiar, but I was too busy learning the music to think about the music - or who wrote it or why. But very rapidly the tricky passages went from daunting to do-able. Everything felt native to the instrument. Was this composer a violinist? I looked it up - yes, she was.

At the first rehearsal, as we played the beginning of the piece, I started to place the familiarity: Doesn't that sound a bit like the Star-Spangled..."Banner"?! As in the title of the piece? Duh!

Right then, I understood that this piece went way deeper than a page of notes, and what's more, its meaning wasn't so hidden or esoteric that I couldn't "get it." It was all in the music, no program notes were needed to understand the meaning: little snippets of America's national anthem served up in many permutations and moods - joyful, sad, fearful, interrupted. And these are set with and against other music - folk music, other anthems, songs...

Sophisticated, deep stuff. It hit me all at once, and immediately, I loved it.

Composer and violinist Jessie Montgomery. Photo by Jiyang Chen.

My initial impressions have only deepened over the last few years, as my encounters with the music of Jessie Montgomery have steadily increased. There are always technical challenges, but they are always do-able. And there is always meaning to be discovered and explored.

I've played four of her pieces in orchestra (the other three were Strum, Starburst and Coincident Dances.)

I also had the wonderful privilege of seeing the West Coast premiere of Jessie's viola concerto L.E.S. Characters with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and of interviewing the soloist, violist Masumi Rostad. Masumi was a childhood friend of Jessie's - they met as classmates at the Third Street Music School Settlement - the place where Jessie started Suzuki violin lessons at age 4 with Alice Kanack. Her viola concerto was a tribute to the swirl of artistic spirit and activity all around them during the '80s and '90s, growing up in in New York City's Lower East Side (L.E.S.) - a depiction of the characters that populated their lives.

Jessie's music has been played by top orchestras across the U.S. and the world, and in 2021 she received a Grammy for her composition Rounds. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Jessie continues to play the violin and often performs along with the musicians who are playing her works.

Not only that, but also she is in demand as a teacher and mentor for young people. Last summer she concluded a three-year composing residency with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where she also launched the Young Composers Initiative, a program that supports the education and work of high school-age composers.

In February she began an Artistic Residency as an Arnhold Creative Associate at The Juilliard School - the same school where she earned her bachelor's degree in violin performance in 2003. (She also has a master's degree in Composition for Film and Multimedia at New York University.) On March 24 her solo and chamber music will be featured alongside works by Matthew Aucoin and Caroline Shaw in a program called Carnegie Hall Presents Juilliard at Zankel Hall. And on March 26 she'll do "Who's in the Lobby?" - a casual showcase of spontaneous art-making between students, alumni, Arnhold Creative Associates, and special guests - in the lobby at Juilliard.

I spoke with her in late February, shortly after that Juilliard residency had started with a Composer Spotlight concert featuring her works on Feb. 12. We spoke via Zoom about her musical upbringing, her sources of inspiration, and her conviction that music-making is closely related to community-building.

A native of New York City, Jessie said that she came to play the violin by chance: her parents visited the Third Street Music School Settlement - a community music school founded in 1894 on the Lower East Side - and signed her up with the teacher they liked best, Alice Kanack.

"I started on Suzuki violin with her, and I just liked it," Jessie said. "It wasn't anything unique about the violin itself, I just liked practicing, for the most part, and I enjoyed it very much. So I just did it!"

"Both of my parents were creative, they're both artists, so there was a culture of creativity in the household," she said. Her late mother was the playwright and actor Robbie McCauley, and her father, Ed Montgomery, is a composer, jazz musician and independent film maker. "I decided that I wanted to be an artist - or that I wanted to play the violin forever, at least - when I was 12 or 13 years old."

"I did quit at one point, when I was 11," she said. "You know, kids in junior high school, they have that little crisis where they want to quit everything. So my teacher let me quit for a few months. She said, 'You don't have to practice, but you should come to improv class.'"

That was irresistible; she loved improvisation class. "So I came to improv class every week, and eventually I got back into it again," she said. "Then I chose it; it was a decision to take it seriously."

It was around that time that she wrote her first compositions. "The very first thing I wrote was a piano trio that was terrible," she said. "It was the first try at writing something, writing the ideas down."

But it didn't take long for her to have another go at it and to become completely immersed in composing. She wrote a piece for the concert band at her junior high school, and in the process of doing so, "my band teacher sat down with me and went over the transpositions for each instrument," she said. "I learned all the transpositions and wrote them all out by hand." That "locked it in" for her - "I wrote a piece called 'The Dance.' After that, I went crazy writing pieces for my wind band. I wrote a piece for two flutes, one for concert band, one for clarinets..."

The teaching started early, too. "After Juilliard, I didn't go directly into my master's, I started teaching at Community MusicWorks in Providence," she said. It was a pivotal experience for her. "It reinforced what I felt about music and how I see music functioning in my life: that this trifecta of teaching, performing and organizing is all somehow grounded in community." The work is local, and it is regenerative. "That experience solidified those ideas for me, and I find myself seeking that now in my career," she said. "With all of the work that I've done, all of the big-name things that have been happening, I still feel that pull, to create a community impact of some kind, through music."

"Music is an attraction. It brings people together," Jessie said. She described a recent concert at Chicago's Orchestra Hall. Pianist Awadagin Pratt was performing her Grammy-award-winning piano concerto "Rounds," with the Sphinx Virtuosi - and for this performance, Jessie joined the orchestra.

"I used to play in the Sphinx Virtuosi, so this was a cameo moment, where I came in and played with them for this concert," she said. "But it was a point of gathering - so many people, friends from the orchestra from a long time ago, saw this as a special moment. They bought tickets and drove down and flew in - it ended up being an awesome get-together afterwards."

The point is that the act of creating live music brings people together. "There's the attraction of the music and the attraction of the people who are making the music, and once you have everybody in the room, then you start to generate other connections," she said.

She mentioned one of her own quotes, which has appeared on her website for some time: "I imagine that music is a meeting place at which all people can converse about their unique differences and common stories.”

"I still feel that way," she said. "In fact, I'm starting to realize what I meant by that, more and more, as I go on. People get excited about music, and then they show up, and then there's an opportunity to grow or connect in some other way."

What makes for a good composition?

"It's all about the form, the pacing, the line and the emotional arc," she said. "It feels complete, if it has a beginning, middle and end - if it feels like it has a story arc. It doesn't have to be narrative, it doesn't have to be 'a story about a thing,' but there are pacings that are mathematically pleasing - relationships within the music. If those things are lining up nicely, then I feel good."

How does she feel, watching a rehearsal of one of her own works?

"Mostly, I'm hoping to get across some of the main architectural and emotional aspects of the music to the players, but I'm pretty flexible," she said. "If someone is bringing an interpretation to the piece, I'm really willing to explore that. The main thing is remaining open to other people's ideas."

"As the person who is providing the thing that people are now interpreting, I think of myself, when I sit down and interpret a piece of music. You just trust that there's an honest exchange happening there," she said. "For me, dynamics are very structural. I find I zero in on that particular element a lot of time."

And where does she find inspiration for her compositions?

"I find inspiration from all kinds of life experiences," she said. "I may gain insight to something and then want to express it musically."

She used her composition "Banner" as an example of her process. The piece was actually written in 2014 for the 200th anniversary of the Star Spangled Banner, and she started by "thinking about how write an anthem, then letting that thought guide me to other questions and ideas," she said. For example: What about anthems from other countries? What about being in conversation with the Star Spangled Banner? "I just keep asking myself these series of questions, going through the intellectual process, the critical process of distilling this initial thought. Then I begin to extract musical associations, then try to string them together. Then you have a whole new set of materials, potentially. Then you start composing, tying it together."

All that exploration happens before she writes a note, she said.

"It's all pre-writing," she said. The same process applied to her viola concerto, L.E.S. Characters. "Similarly, I had conversations with Masumi about the people we both remembered. Once we could agree on who those people were, then we started researching, seeing if we could find any remnants of their lives." For one character, they found a photograph - and it evoked certain feelings.

"I think that music is an emotional thing," Jessie said. "Yes, music is a phenomenon that we can study intellectually. But the thing that makes music impactful or meaningful is if it can speak to emotional qualities as well. And you can write music that speaks to emotions without being overly sentimental or corny about it. The emotional arc and emotional qualities within a piece of music are also part of the infrastructure of the music itself."

This spring, Jessie is enjoying being back at Juilliard - and learning what the school is like now, several decades after she graduated.

"I think the most interesting part about being back at Juilliard right now is seeing that there's been a major cultural shift there," she said. "The students seem a little bit more relaxed. They're still serious, hard-working musicians. But there seems to be a very caring culture now between how the administrators view the students and how they interact with the students. It just feels a little bit more nurturing."

"That's been nice to see, and it proves the point - they didn't lose anything on rigor, seriousness or the quality of the music-making, by being more supportive," she said.

Young people have a different set of concerns than they did 20 years ago, "they're much more acutely aware of the world around them, because of social media. And they're also more concerned about 'making it.'"

"So it's all about continuing to offer some perspective," she said. For example, be patient and take the time you need. "You're going to be an artist for the rest of your life. I think if you decide to be an artist, and then you don't create anything for a super long time, you're still an artist."

"I can't give them the answers, but I can share my experience," she said. "Encouragement - essentially that's it. And that's how I got what I got, it was by people deciding to encourage and support me. Being able to offer that encouragement and perspective from where I am, at this point in my life - it feels very full circle, in a really nice way."

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Rachel Barton Pine

March 19, 2025 at 04:51 AM · My 13-year-old daughter Sylvia participates in the Chicago Symphony's Young Composers Initiative with Jessie, and it's been such an amazing experience to be mentored by her. And years ago, when she was a very young aspiring composer, Jessie also advised Sylvia to study classical improvisation with her former teacher Alice Kanack, which was transformative.

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Violinist.com Interview with Composer Jessie Montgomery

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