6/28/2023 0 Comments Jessie montgomery composerThat's how it functions, really, at the end of the day. ![]() I find audiences show up because they want to experience live music, live theater, something that sparks their imagination and soothes their pain. With any new kind of programming and endeavor, you take a leap of faith that the audiences are going to be into it. Shawn Okpebholo, another great colleague of mine in Chicago, he's getting a lot of play right now. ![]() It does seem that orchestras, chamber groups and opera companies are embracing composers that they wouldn't traditionally embrace: myself, and composers like Carlos Simon whose work has been programmed a ton. According to programs around the country, it does seem to be changing. In 2008, while teaching at a summer music camp in Rhode Island, Montgomery realized life as a composer could be "a thing." A colleague walked in on her in the middle of composing and told her she had a "spark" in her eye for writing music.īut do you actually feel a change in the air in the past couple of years? Is the canon really shifting toward more women composers and composers of color? She took lessons and continued composing throughout high school, and in her late teens began an association with the Sphinx Organization, a Detroit-based institution dedicated to supporting young Black and Latinx musicians. Growing up with artistic parents in New York, Montgomery began writing little piano trios when she was around 11. On April 28, Muti leads the CSO in the world premiere of Montgomery's Hymn for Everyone, one of three new pieces she's writing for the orchestra during her tenure in Chicago. ![]() In the upcoming concert season, her works will be performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, where she is currently the Mead Composer-in-Residence, appointed by Music Director Riccardo Muti. In the past several years, the 40-year-old composer and violinist has rapidly become a poster child for the shifting classical music canon - an artist who aims to overcome an institutional dependence on old dead white men by leveling the field for women and composers of color. Jessie Montgomery's new work Hymn for Everyone receives its world premiere with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on April 28.
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