Rounds, for piano and string orchestra

Jessie Montgomery was born December 8, 1981, in New York City, and lives there. Rounds was commissioned by Art of the Piano Foundation for pianist Awadagin Pratt and co-commissioned by Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, IRIS Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony, Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. Awadagin Pratt gave the premiere March 27, 2022, with John Morris Russell conducting the Hilton Head Symphony Orchestra at the First Presbyterian Church, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The first Boston Symphony performances of the piece were September 22-23, 2022, led by Andris Nelsons with Awadagin Pratt as soloist.

The score of Rounds calls for solo piano and string orchestra (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses). Rounds is about 15 minutes long.

Jessie Montgomery is a violinist, composer, and music educator born and raised in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. As the daughter of a musician and a theater artist, Montgomery’s involvement in the arts began at an early age. She began playing the violin as a child, and with the encouragement of her violin teacher, began taking composition classes at the Third Street Music School at age 10. Her first pieces were for string quartet; in middle school she received her first unofficial commission. The result was Dance, written for her middle school concert band (she played clarinet). It was also during those early years that Montgomery was molded as an educator, advocate, and performer. Her parents would take her to rallies, performances, and parties where Montgomery encountered a wide range of artists, performances, storytelling, and activism. The eclectic culture of her world in the Lower East Side of the 1980s would be the foundation of her perspective as a composer.

In 2003, Montgomery earned a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from the Juilliard School and in 2012 completed her master’s degree in composition for film and multimedia at New York University. That same year, she revised her first professional commission into a work for string quartet. That piece, Strum, commissioned by Community MusicWorks, is now one of her most frequently performed compositions. An avid chamber musician, Montgomery was a founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Providence and Catalyst quartets. Currently, Montgomery continues to enjoy her multifaceted career as an acclaimed composer and a highly sought-after violinist, music educator, and advocate. Currently completing her PhD in composition at Princeton University, she holds faculty positions at various institutions and is currently the Mead Composer-in-Residence for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Montgomery has composed works for orchestra, ensemble, voice, and solo instruments with performances and commissions across the globe. Her artistry as a violinist can be heard on her album Jessie Montgomery (Strum: Music for Strings), several Catalyst Quartet albums, and on the debut album of her latest ensemble, big dog little dog. Her compositions can also be heard on such labels as Azica, Cedille, NewAm, and Bright Shiny Things.

In 2022, Montgomery completed Rounds, her first substantial composition featuring the piano. In a September interview, Montgomery shared her many inspirations for the piece. First, there was the process of writing for a new instrument. She prepared by listening to piano recordings—specifically the recordings of Awadagin Pratt. When it came to composing, she recalled, “It took me a long time to get started because I had a lot of apprehension about what I was going to do and how I was going to handle it. But I just took it slowly. I used whatever little piano skills I have myself to plunk things out.” Then, the piece began to take shape. Montgomery described finding a key musical idea from her graduate school days. In Rounds, there is a repeated chord progression that she describes as sounding “a little serialist” [i.e., chromatic and reminiscent of 12-tone music]. This provides the basis for the middle sections of the piece. That chord progression was borrowed from a score that she composed over a decade ago to accompany the 1907 silent film The Red Spectre. “That’s one of the modes in which I compose: looking back at old material and giving it a new perspective.” And as an artist often inspired by the world around her, the concept of “rounds” emerged after learning of the circular flying patterns of migratory birds as well as the infinite repetition found within fractals.

Working with a melting pot of inspiration is an essential part of Montgomery’s work as an artist. She shared, “One of the things that is important to me as an artist and a person is that I have the freedom to express or create from whatever place feels right for me at the time. Or that I have range in my exploration and my subject matter within pieces. There was no agenda or messaging in this piece, as there are in other works of mine. I enjoyed working with these really abstract concepts and metaphysical inspiration. I love having that flexibility within my art overall.” This flexibility was also extended to Awadagin Pratt, who performs an improvised cadenza.

yelley taylor

yelley taylor is a violinist, violist, and writer. They are currently based in the Seattle area.

Jessie Montgomery’s comments on her piece Rounds

Rounds for solo piano and string orchestra is inspired by the imagery and themes from T.S. Eliot’s epic poem “Four Quartets.” Early in the first poem, “Burnt Norton,” we find these evocative lines:

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
(© T.S. Eliot. Reproduced by courtesy of Faber and Faber Ltd)

In addition to this inspiration, while working on the piece, I became fascinated by fractals (infinite patterns found in nature that are self-similar across different scales) and also delved into the work of contemporary biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber, who writes about the interdependency of all beings. Weber explores how every living organism has a rhythm that interacts and impacts with all of the living things around it and results in a multitude of outcomes.

Like Eliot in “Four Quartets,” beginning to understand this interconnectedness requires that we slow down, listen, and observe both the effect and the opposite effect caused by every single action and moment. I’ve found this is an exercise that lends itself very naturally towards musical gestural possibilities that I explore in the work—action and reaction, dark and light, stagnant and swift.

Structurally, with these concepts in mind, I set the form of the work as a rondo, within a rondo, within a rondo. The five major sections are a rondo; section “A” is also a rondo in itself; and the cadenza—which is partially improvised by the soloist—breaks the pattern, yet contains within it the overall form of the work.

To help share some of this with the performers, I’ve included the following poetic performance note at the start of the score:

Inspired by the constancy, the rhythms, and duality of life, in order of relevance to form:
Rondine – AKA Swifts (like a sparrow) flying in circles patterns
Playing with opposites – dark/light; stagnant/swift
Fractals – infinite design

I am grateful to my friend Awadagin Pratt for his collaborative spirit and ingenuity in helping to usher my first work for solo piano into the world.

Jessie Montgomery, February 2022