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Jessie Montgomery’s Vibrantly Inventive Music for Strings

Jed Distler

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A New York native, Jessie Montgomery is a violinist in the Catalyst Quartet who has been steadily turning out vibrantly inventive original works for strings. The disc’s opening selection, Starburst for string orchestra, reflects today’s fashionable motoric, pop-oriented, post-minimalist style, albeit with memorable melodies, structural discipline, and not one cliché in the book. Think Ernest Bloch meets John Adams: that’s a compliment!

The ad-hoc string orchestra delivers a crisp, incisive performance. By contrast, the ruminative, hauntingly sustained, and harmonically beautiful Source Code for string quartet contains strategically placed solos that feature long, slow glissandos that evoke the image of a seasoned yet emotionally fragile singer trying to negotiate a difficult interval leap that once was second nature.

The multi-movement Break Away is both technically challenging and musically rewarding. Its first movement’s aphoristic soft chords and sudden outbursts require split-second precision and balance. The second movement, Songbird, is an inspired mélange of dark, bluesy harmonies and quick, cartoonish glissandos of varying durations. The final movement, for which the piece is titled, shuffles elemental pop music “power chords” and decorative harmonics in unpredictable sequences that eventually grow wildly dissonant before dissipating into a quiet ending.

In this context, the solo violin rhapsody that Montgomery wrote for herself is surprisingly austere and introspective. I’m sure that Montgomery the violinist’s technically spot-on, sensitive, and astutely timed performance pleased Montgomery the composer! Strum’s innocent, quasi folk/rock beginning gives no clue of the chattering, asymmetrical Bartókian development to come. Banner for solo string quartet and string orchestra is the disc’s compositional high point, and proves to be much more than a mere rhapsody on The Star Spangled Banner.

In its first minute it paraphrases and mashes up the national anthem’s phrases as if one is trying to grasp threads of simultaneous conversations. A driving dance section follows, where the tune flirts with Leonard Bernstein’s “America” from West Side Story without directly quoting it. There is a lyrical yet slightly disquieting middle section accompanied by a soft, persistent military-minded drumbeat, and an energetic conclusion where thematic strands topple over each other like commuters vying for seats on a rush hour train.

To my ears, the work’s complexity, substance, and communicative directness lend itself to a wider palette of instrumental color, and it wouldn’t be rash to suggest that Montgomery rescore it for full orchestra. Not that it doesn’t work for strings only–far from it–but there’s more emotional force to this music than what Montgomery’s already admirable and skillful string writing suggests. There’s no doubting Jessie Montgomery’s strong and personal creative voice, her assured technique, and her possession of an expressive generosity from which many of her composer contemporaries can learn.

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Recording Details:

Album Title: Strum: Music for Strings
Reference Recording: None for this collection

  • MONTGOMERY, JESSIE:
    Starburst (2012); Source Code (2013); Break Away (2013); Rhapsody No. 1 (2015); Banner (2014); Strum (2012)

    Soloists: Jessie Montgomery (violin)

    Catalyst Quartet; PUBLIQuartet; String Orchestra, Julian Wachner

  • Record Label: Azica - 71302
  • Medium: CD

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