NOVA Chamber Music Series has been excellent in featuring a good representation of contemporary composers in recent seasons but the recent Jessie Montgomery Plays Jessie Montgomery concert was a wonderful prototype for future periodic programming where the works of a single contemporary figure are showcased.
The concert at the Libby Gardner Hall at the University of Utah easily brought one of NOVA’s largest audiences in recent years and it was encouraging to see a good number of young people as well. The appeal was multifaceted: Montgomery, a Grammy Award winning composer; more than 20 young student musicians from Sistema Utah, the support of Mundi Project, the Fry Street Quartet and musicians from the Utah Symphony and the University of Utah.
All seven featured works, including five by Montgomery, elicited equally enthusiastic applause. Conducted by Rodrigo Betancourth, the Sistema Utah students, with the composer playing violin as well, performed her D Major Jam (2020), a smartly crafted piece joining advanced and beginning level students. Immediately after, Montgomery and violinist Laura Ha played a curated selection of 12 short pieces— one-half picked from Montgomery’s Musings (2023) and the other half coming from Bartók’s 44 Violin Duos (1931), a work that many student violinists eventually encounter and have value throughout a string player’s career. As noted earlier in a preview at The Utah Review, Montgomery has a strong affinity for Bartók’s musical philosophy. The way in which these pieces were juxtaposed was marvelous. Listeners could readily identify how Montgomery’s sinewy, lustrous string language has incorporated many elements of the American music vernacular, much of which is credited to African-Americans, in her own Bartókian sense.
Likewise, her Rhapsody No. 2 (2021), which originally was written for violin but transcribed for viola, was just as dynamic in its appeal and accessibility, thanks to the performance by violist John T. Posadas. The first half ended on an exhilarating high, with Ha returning to the stage with pianist Viktor Valkov in a robust reading of Bartók’s Rhapsody No. 1, Sz. 87 (1928).for violin and piano. It was another edifying juxtaposition for the afternoon.
Two other Montgomery pieces highlighted the second half, starting with a Duo for Violin and Cello, again with Ha on violin and Walter Haman on cello. This 2015 work, which Montgomery wrote as a gift of friendship with cellist Adrienne Taylor, comprises three movements, written with bright glimpses into the composer’s personality. Throughout the concert, Montgomery’s generous demeanor went a long way in inviting the audience to be comfortable in taking in the experience of contemporary music, without worrying about feeling intimidated or unsure.
The audience responded to each piece with the same decibel level of applause and vocal appreciation. Just as commanding was the Fry Street Quartet’s outstanding performance of Source Code (2013), a seminal piece in her oeuvre laying out the foundations upon which she would compose her subsequent works, including the other four compositions heard earlier.
The concert bonus was the Utah premiere of Fractured Water (2015) by Shawn Okpebholo, a colleague of Montgomery who also is part of the Blacknificent7, a composer collective that has blossomed, especially during the time when Montgomery was composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony. The trio for flute, cello and piano is ingeniously conceived and produced the afternoon’s most moving moments. NOVA audiences have been exposed to a fairly good number of contemporary works in recent years that are inspired by ecology, nature, conservation and environmental issues and many of them have effectively gone beyond the abstract context to give concrete tangents to the listener.
No question, Fractured Water, focusing on the Chicago River and on water pollution and preservation in general excels here. Each musician at various points is instructed to pick an object from a plastic bin (which includes water) to create water percussion effects. Impressively, these effects fall naturally into the fabric of the conventional instrumental textures and heighten the emotional impact, especially at the end of the piece. It was an outstanding performance, with Caitlyn Valovick Moore on flute, Fry Street Quartet cellist Anne Francis Bayless and Valkov on piano.
This is the second time in the last year an Okpebholo work has been presented at a NOVA concert. Given the success of this Montgomery concert, NOVA should be encouraged to curate a similar concert in the near future highlighting the works of Okpebholo.