b'Program NotesJessie Montgomery(b. 1981) StarburstComposed 2012A native New Yorker, Jessie Montgomery has taken the orchestral world by storm in recent years. She is a founding member of PUBLIQuartet and recent member of the Catalyst Quartet, a member of the Sphinx Virtuosi, and an extremely active and acclaimed composer whose works are being performed by world class orchestras across the globe. She has been the recipient of many awards including the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and grants from the Joyce Foundation and the Sorel Organization. Her music interweaves elements of classical music, jazz, improvisation, and social justice which has earned her a reputation as one of the most relevant interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. I first met Jessie in Detroit when we were both playing in the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra. We always found ourselves circulating in the same post rehearsal/post-concert groups, and for good reason. As it so happens, we both attended Kinhaven Music School in our teenage years, a place dedicated to nurturing not only the musical proclivities of its students, but also the humanness of each of its students. Although we missed each other by a summer or two, we have many close friends in common through this connection. Its always a pleasure to get a chance to reconnect with her and her very personable nature. I have also had the pleasure of conducting two of her works in recent months, Records of A Vanishing City (Oberlin Contemporary Ensemble) and Banner (Symphony in C). Becoming familiar with her work has been one of the joys of my recent career, and Starburst is no exception. Montgomery offers the following program note about Starburst: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'