By Montague Gammon III
One of the most acclaimed of contemporary composers, the 2024 GRAMMY winner for Best Contemporary Classical Composition, Jessie Montgomery, who’s also a prime instrumentalist and who just happens to have a real, albeit distant, familial Norfolk connection, takes the stage April 15 at the Virginia Arts Festival’s Downtown Norfolk home for a multi-composer concert that wraps up her two year Composer in Residence program with the VAF.
The venue is the Festival’s Robin Hixon Theater at their Clay and Jay Barr Education Center headquarters, the concert is simply called “Jessie Montgomery,” subtitled “violin and composer.” She will be joined by the Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players, all members of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra.
Montgomery has been a mainstay of the Festival since she first appeared here 12 years ago as a violinist with the Catalyst Quartet.
The Festival, partnered with the 2019 American Evolution Commemoration, later commissioned her first ballet score, “Passage,” for the Harlem Dance Theatre. The work, which recognized the 400th Anniversary of the initial arrival of African slaves in Virginia, made its debut here, and went on to garner nationwide plaudits.
May of 2023 saw Montgomery’s “Five Freedom Songs” performed at the Attucks as the central work of a VAF program of the same name.
She called her time here these last two years as Composer in Residence “a continuation of a collaborative relationship that has lasted for a long time now,” terming her connection to VAF, in a wide ranging phone chat, “a progressive relationship that has developed over the past decade plus.”
(She’s also been a featured guest of the Virginia Symphony, a friend and musical collaborator of VSO Music Director Eric Jacobsen since their undergrad days.)
Details of what’s on the April program were being firmed up as of interview time, but here is her enthusiastic description of what’s planned so far:
“The way that I curate a program is, I think about ways to include composers that may be new to audiences…composers that may be just getting their name up there, just starting out.”
“One of the highlights is going to be a piece by [young composer] Jorge Amado…We’re going to have a string quartet of his on the program…a very fresh work and then,, we might have a student piece from the Governor’s School.”
“I also like to feature something supportive of young artists; that I have collaborated with through VAF…highlighting youth work can be really inspiring for people.”
(Most online summaries of Montgomery term her a composer, a violinist, and an educator.)
“The other piece on the program is my “Concerto Grosso” which includes some improvisatory aspects so it’s; stylistically very representative of a large portion of my music.”
“The concert’s all new music…the oldest piece on the program will be maybe, 5, 8 years old. I want to show the audience that new music has a lot to it…There’s a lot of accessibility in new music…I think the reputation of new music is that it’s hard to listen to. I think that’s an old trope…It’s just not factual anymore. There’s a lot of really inspired and very moving new music being composed right now and Jorge, with his quartet, people will sort of perk up and realize ‘OK! There’s something unique about this, maybe there’s a way into that.’”
Asked what she would say to potential audience members who have various experience with chamber music and new contemporary music, she said:
“I think chamber music inspires communication. There’s so much communication that’s needed among the players, it can be very exciting to see the music happening up close and personal…”
“There’s something in there for anyone. Even for experienced new music fans, these are pieces that haven’t been recorded yet, so they all are probably going to be exciting and new.”
About that familial connection to Norfolk: Montgomery’s mother, Robbie Doris McCauley, was born here early in World War II; her father a career military man who was also a Norfolk native. Montgomery said that when her mom was a very young child she and her family left Norfolk for DC, so there were no mother-to-daughter Norfolk stories, but there is a clear through-line of creativity.
McCauley was an actor in the original Broadway production of Ntozake Shange’s multiple award winning “for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.” She wrote and directed plays in NYC (where Montgomery was born), and taught as a professor at Emerson College for 12 years. Ms. Montgomery’s father, Ed Montgomery, was a composer.
Montgomery’s eponymous Springtime concert, she said, “will be something that really encompasses all the elements of my past two years including work with students and including myself performing in the concert.” She voiced reassurance that she is not abandoning Hampton Roads for good, just “wrapping up a series of work that we have done.”
WANT TO GO?
Jessie Montgomery: violin and composer
Virginia Arts Festival Chamber Players
7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 15
Robin Hixon Theater, Clay and Jay Barr Education Center
440 Bank St., Norfolk
757-282-2822
