b'Program NotesOne of the great delights of both Tchaikovsky and Elgars music is the variety of beautiful sonorities they create with the orchestra. The magical celeste sound in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovskys ballet The Nutcracker and the charming exchanges between winds and strings in the Dorabella movement of Elgars Enigma Variations create strongly defined characters and sounds that delight the ear and the imagination. But the success of the orchestration depends on a foundation of compositional structure, and it is notable that these composers achieve equally striking effects using only the versatile sound of the string section. In Strum, Jessie Montgomery also masterfully uses the timbral contrasts of the strings, from the percussive, plucked and strummed sounds of pizzicato to the lush singing tone and choppy chords produced with the bow and the haunting coolness of the harmonics.Jessie Montgomery (b.1981)StrumComposed 2012Composer, violinist, and educator Jessie Montgomery is the winner of both the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and the ASCAP Foundations Leonard Bernstein Award. She has just been appointed to a three-year term as Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Montgomerys music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, language, and social justice, placing her squarely as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral pieces, commissioned by such organizations as the Albany Symphony, American Music Festival, Chicago Sinfonietta, Joyce Foundation, National Symphony Orchestra, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Sphinx Organization, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and Young Peoples Chorus of New York. The first recording devoted to her music, Strum: Music for Strings, was released by Azica princetonsymphony.org/ 10'