NOVA Chamber Music Series has scored a major coup in securing Grammy-Award-winning composer Jessie Montgomery, not only for her music but also her performance as a violinist on the March 9 concert (3 p.m.) in Libby Gardner Hall.
In 2024.she won the Grammy for best contemporary classical composition, with Rounds, a 15-minute work for piano and strings, featuring pianist Awadagin Pratt. Rounds received its Utah premiere last December by the Utah Symphony. Just last weekend, Montgomery joined Detroit Symphony Orchestra string players in accompanying Pratt on the concert. There have been nearly 50 performances by major orchestras since the work’s 2023 premiere.
No doubt, this is NOVA’s biggest concert of the 2024-25 season. One aspect that will immediately connect NOVA audiences to Montgomery’s music is, in part. the inspirational affinity to Bartók and Britten, two composers whose works have made for some of the series’ most memorable concerts in recent seasons.
Among the works on the March 9 concert will be Musings for two violins (2023), which the composer will perform with fellow violinist Laura Ha. The two violinists also will be featured in selections from Bartók’s 44 Violin Duos. Another Montgomery-Bartók pairing will feature her Rhapsody for solo viola (2021), which will be performed by violist JT Posadas, and Bartók’s Rhapsody for violin and piano, which will be performed by Ha on violin and Viktor Valkov on piano.
The concert is packed with Montgomery gems. It will open with her D Major Jam (2021), a short work which will feature the composer and musicians from Sistema Utah, who will be conducted by Rodrigo Bentancourth. Other Montgomery works include Duo for violin and cello (2015), featuring Ha on violin and Walter Haman on cello.
The closing work will be Source Code (2020), with Fry Street Quartet performing its Utah premiere. As Montgomery explains in a note at her website, she begins with transcriptions “re-interpreting gestures, sentences, and musical syntax (the bare bones of rhythm and inflection) by choreographer Alvin Ailey, poets Langston Hughes and Rita Dove, and the great jazz songstress Ella Fitzgerald into musical sentences and tone paintings.” From there, Montgomery returned to the Black spiritual as the coalescing force. The spiritual is a significant part of the DNA of black folk music, and subsequently most (arguably all) American pop music forms that have developed to the present day,” she wrote. “This one-movement work is a kind of dirge, which centers on a melody based on syntax derived from black spirituals. The melody is continuous and cycles through like a gene strand with which all other textures play.”
A bonus on the March 9 concert will be the Utah premiere of Fractured Water(2019) by Shawn Okpebholo, scored for flute (Caitlyn Valovick Moore), cello (Anne Francis-Bayless) and piano (Viktor Valkov). A member of the Blacknificent 7, a composer’s collective that Montgomery created, Okpebholo should be a familiar name to recent NOVA concertgoers. Last season, flutist Mercedes Smith gave a magnificent Utah premiere of his On a Poem by Miho Nonaka: Harvard Square.
In an interview with The Utah Review, Montgomery, reflecting on her simultaneous roles as composer, performer and educator, said, “I continue to find ways to make the parts work together, embodying all the sides that make an artist and collaborating and workshopping new music, teaching younger generations and working together as diligently as we can. My mom [who is a playwright and theatrical producer] has been a role model for me both academically and as a performer.”
She describes the programming for this NOVA concert as a mix of new, recent and not-so-recent musings. She recalls her first time in Utah, some 15 years ago when she was in the Park City chamber music series at the same time as composer Joan Tower, an experience that she says gave her the first kernels for Source Code.
For Source Code, she explained that she pulled the threads from the vernacular of spiritual songs to imagine her own interpretation, by leaning into inspired musical references such as blues and even Benjamin Britten, including his second string quartet (some will know immediately Fry Street Quartet’s extensive relationship with Britten’s chamber music which has been part of quite a few NOVA concerts).
Montgomery added that she is thrilled to share the slate with Okpebholo, who was named last December Chicagoan of the Year in Classical Music by the Chicago Tribune. Music critic Hannah Edgar wrote. “I’m even harder pressed to think of anyone, anywhere, who composes with Okpebholo’s finesse across so many genres. His art songs ache, from the shattering diptych of Two Black Churches to Songs in Flight, whose settings of runaway slave ads were the most haunting thing I heard this year. His instrumental music surges with Ivesian detail and color. His Black Music,for saxophone quartet and trumpet, premiered on what was ostensibly a Scott Johnson tribute concert in February. That heady work made off with the whole thing.”
About the Blacknificent 7, Montgomery said, “The collective which started as a focus group has evolved into a full support composer for composers to share insights, experiences and questions about everything, including artistic topics, business, industry standards, music publishing and comparing notes on our projects.” It has become a major musical powerhouse in the U.S. And, in the hostile light of the impact of policies that have ripped away the genuine benefits of diversity, equity and inclusion, the aggregate force of artistic collectives such as these takes on greater effect and urgency, in partnering with arts organizations to navigate these turbulent waters.
About D Major Jam, Montgomery said it was fun to create music so that teachers and students can play together, with parts for beginners as well as more advanced players.
In addition to her appearance at Libby Gardner Concert Hall, NOVA has partnered with Westminster University, Sistema Utah, and The Mundi Project on two additional events with Montgomery. On Monday, March 10, Montgomery will speak with musicians at Westminster University (10 a.m., Gillmor School of Music) and perform with the young musicians of Sistema Utah and The Mundi Project (7 p.m., American Preparatory Academy, West Valley City). These two events are free and open to the public.
For tickets and more information about the March 9 concert, see the NOVA Chamber Music Series website.