Going Back to Montgomery’s Debut Album

courtesy of Naxos of America

Exactly one month ago I realized that it was about time that I should get beyond a knowledge of the music of Jessie Montgomery limited to bits and pieces. That realization was triggered when SFSymphony+ streamed a performance of the chamber version of “Strum,” which also happened to be the title of her debut album on Azica Records. That album had been released at the end of September in 2015, and it surveyed music for strings that she had composed between 2012 and 2015.

Indeed, much of my awareness of Montgomery was due to the San Francisco Symphony (SFS). Unless I am mistaken, my “first contact” took place during this past summer’s concerts in Davies Symphony Hall, when Joseph Young conducted “Banner.” This past September the SFS Youth Orchestra launched its season with a performance of “Starburst.” Another strong advocate for her music has been One Found Sound, whose repertoire includes both “Strum” and “Records from a Vanishing City.”

The album includes “Strum” and “Starburst,” both of which were composed in 2012, along with “Banner,” which was composed in 2014. The other selections include a solo violin rhapsody, played by Montgomery herself, “Source Code,” performed by the Catalyst Quartet, for which she was founding second violin, and the suite Break Away, performed by the string ensemble PUBLIQuartet, which she co-founded. She has since left Catalyst, replaced by Abi Fayette; and she is currently Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

What is particularly impressive is that, while this album limits itself to the string family, each of the six selections has its own distinctive “voice.” Granted, the rhapsody may well have been composed as a platform for Montgomery’s own favorite virtuoso techniques, but there is no shortage of expressiveness behind all of that surface-level virtuosity. My own interests, however, have been particularly drawn to “Banner.”

Back in the twentieth century, Igor Stravinsky had decided to compose an arrangement of “The Star-Spangled Banner;” and, unless I am mistaken, performance of that version was banned by an act of Congress. Things have changed since then; and, as far as I am concerned, changes to our perspective of the national anthem have, for the most part, been for the better. Most people know little more than the first stanza; but what are we to make of this couplet from the fourth:

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’

“Banner” enjoys a rhetoric of high spirits; but those spirits are celebrating the prodigious diversity of background cultures encountered in the broad spectrum of our citizens, which continues to grow as new immigrant cultures apply for citizenship. It seeks to transcend any lingering jingoism, rather than trying to attack any prevailing prejudices. Congress may still harbor some of those who still embrace the “WASP” (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) perspective. Fortunately, they constitute a minority; and, hopefully, their numbers will remain limited.

The “bottom line” is that Montgomery’s Strum album has drawn my attention; now I am ready to shift that attention to following what she does with her Chicago residency.