Starburst
Jessie Montgomery
(b. December 8, 1981 in New York City)
Since 1999 Jessie Montgomery has supported the Sphinx Organization, a nonprofit whose mission is to bring diversity to the arts and to support Black and Latinx string players. As she has supported the Sphinx Organization, so it has supported her. Her Banner for Chamber Orchestra programmed by the CSO in 2022 was a Sphinx Organization commission. They also commissioned tonight’s Starburst, an earlier piece written in 2012 for the Sphinx Virtuosi, a professional touring ensemble supported by the Sphinx Organization. The title Starburst plays off her perception of their young and talented players as “new stars in a galaxy.”
Montgomery’s own description of Starburst also makes clear her admiration of the Sphinx Virtuosi as the perfect choice to first present it:
“This brief one-movement work for string orchestra is a play on imagery of rapidly changing musical colors. Exploding gestures are juxtaposed with gentle fleeting melodies in an attempt to create a multidimensional soundscape. A common definition of a starburst, ‘the rapid formation of large numbers of new stars in a galaxy at a rate high enough to alter the structure of the galaxy significantly,’ lends itself almost literally to the nature of the performing ensemble that premiered the work, the Sphinx Virtuosi, and I wrote the piece with their dynamic in mind.”
Although a black woman, Jessie Montgomery grew up with more privilege than not in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Here are comments she made about her childhood:
“My mum was a poet and playwright, and my dad ran a music studio where artists were always coming in and out. I was very lucky, but the area had its hard parts too, and at one point people did not want to come there because of the social problems in the neighborhood.
“It was a very neat upbringing. I always had a very eclectic experience with music and art, and that has been a tremendous gift.”
As a child she went around playing her violin and wanted to ignore politics, if only reacting against her parents being so deeply involved. As she learned more history of her family and culture, she realized it was her own legacy. She could not ignore it and knew it was hers to continue, that her unique experiences gave her valuable material to work with and pass on.