BANNER FOR SOLO STRING QUARTET AND CHAMBER ORCHESTRA

Jessie Montgomery
(b. New York, December 8, 1981)

Composed 2014; 8 minutes

New York-based composer, violinist and educator Jessie Montgomery grew up in the city’s Lower East Side in the 1980s and ‘90s. A Juilliard graduate, she feels grounded in the tradition of classical performance: “I feel very connected to European classical music because of the way I have learned how to play the violin.” Still, being a New Yorker by birth and a long-time resident, Montgomery also embraces a wider perspective. “I’m African American, so I think about black people and black music.” With music played around the world, Montgomery is currently composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Jessie Montgomery writes: “Banner is a tribute to the 200th anniversary of The Star-Spangled Banner, officially declared the American National Anthem in 1814. Scored for solo string quartet and string orchestra, Banner is a rhapsody on the theme of The Star-Spangled Banner. Drawing on musical and historical sources from various world anthems and patriotic songs, I’ve attempted to answer the question: ‘What does an anthem for the 21st century sound like in today’s multi-cultural environment?’

“In my 2009 Anthem: a tribute to the historical election of Barack Obama . . .
I wove together the theme from The Star-Spangled Banner with the commonly named Black National Anthem Lift Every Voice and Sing . . . Banner picks up where Anthem left off by using a similar backbone source in its middle section but expands further, both in the references, and also in the role-play of the string quartet as the individual voice working both with and against the larger community of the orchestra. The structure is loosely based on traditional marching band form where there are several strains or contrasting sections, preceded by an introduction, and I have drawn on the drum
line chorus as a source for the rhythmic underpinning in the finale. Within the same tradition, I have attempted to evoke the breathing of a large brass choir as it approaches the climax of the ‘trio’ section. A variety of other cultural anthems and American folk songs and popular idioms interact to form various textures in the finale, contributing to a multi-layered fanfare.”