Peace for cello and piano by Jessie Montgomery
Published by NYC Music Services
Jessie Montgomery (b 1981) is one of today's most relevant and important interpreters of 21st-century American sound and experience. She has been involved with Community MusicWorks, a Providence, Rhode Island community outreach music education program, as well as the Sphinx Organization, a Detroit-based nonprofit that supports young African American and Latinx string players. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, and has been performed by such ensembles as the New York Philharmonic, A Far Cry, San Francisco Orchestra, and the St. Louis Symphony.
Montgomery's ''Peace'' for cello and piano (originally violin) was written in response to the initial quarantine orders from the COVID-19 pandemic. The composer writes: ''I’m learning to observe sadness for the first time not as a negative emotion, but as a necessary dynamic to the human experience.'' The piece's deeply pensive first section opens with the cello floating on top of a chordal piano accompaniment. The second section is more energetic before returning quietly to the opening music, ending on an ambiguous figure that fades away to silence. Intermediate-advanced level, Grade 4.
