Community Conversation with Jessie Montgomery
Field Hall Presents: Community Conversation with Jessie Montgomery
Wednesday, October 7th @ 5:30PM | Donna M. Morris Theater
Pay-what-makes-you-happy, reservations requested | Click here to RSVP
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Get up-close and personal with one of America’s most celebrated contemporary composers, Jessie Montgomery, as she engages in a Community Conversation and Q&A about her career and the new work she is composing as an Artist in Residence at Field Hall.
The evening will open with students of the PAHS Orchestra performing Strum, one of Jessie’s original compositions which they learned while studying her work with Nathan Rødahl, PAHS Orchestra Director. Strum was the state-winning piece as performed by the 25-26 PAHS Chamber Orchestra at the WMEA State Solo and Ensemble contest. It was subsequently the first time the Large String Ensemble category had been won with a piece written by a woman and the first time the category had been won with a piece composed by a person of color.
The featured performers are:
Violin 1:
Camille Bringhurst
Danielle Woodhouse
Desirae Benzler
Alice Shields
Violin 2:
Stella Fradkin
Alice Johnson
Eve Dry
Haverly Peterson
Viola:
Sky Gelder
Avery Cammisa
Cooper Disque
Cherish Mai
Cello:
Joanna Minnoch
Diego Waterkotte
Connor Cammisa
Bass:
Kayla Grant
The 15-minute performance will be followed by a 30-minute dialogue between Jessie Montgomery and Steve Raider-Ginsburg, Executive & Artistic Director at Field Hall. Finally, Jessie will offer a Q&A with the audience, allowing guests to further explore her work, inspirations, and creative process.
ABOUT FIELD HALL ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE
The Artists-in-Residence (AIR) Program at Field Arts & Events Hall transforms Port Angeles into a center for artistic creation, cultural exchange, and community engagement. Building upon Field Hall’s mission to be a home for arts and events that bring people together and strengthen community, the AIR program shifts the organization beyond traditional presenting into a model of artistic creation and production. Artists are invited to the North Olympic Peninsula for extended residencies to develop new work while engaging deeply with local residents through workshops, masterclasses, lectures, open rehearsals, school visits, and public performances.
Through partnerships with schools, libraries, senior centers, cultural organizations, and regional arts institutions, the program creates meaningful opportunities for community members to participate in the creative process itself, fostering lifelong learning and strengthening the cultural vitality of the region.
Jessie Montgomery will use her residency to advance the creative development of a new opera project intended for future production in partnership with the Metropolitan Opera. The residency will provide dedicated time for musical exploration, collaboration, and public engagement around the process of creating large-scale contemporary opera.
ABOUT NATHAN RØDAHL
Three-time GRAMMY nominated Music Educator Nathan Rødahl has served as Director of Orchestras at Port Angeles High School for nearly a decade. He leads the program’s long-standing quadrennial tours to New York City and has expanded opportunities for North Olympic string players through international performance tours to Central Europe.
Nationally active in music education, Rødahl served two terms as Northwest Chair on NAfME’s National Orchestra Council, served as a Teacher Leader with the federally funded Connected Arts Networks (CAN), and is a nationally recognized presenter on emergent research and string pedagogy. Locally, he serves on the staff of the Wintergrass Festival Orchestra and cofounded the weekly Port Angeles Community String Jam.
ABOUT JESSIE MONTGOMERY
Jessie Montgomery is a GRAMMY® Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, establishing her as an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Named Performance Today’s 2025 Classical Woman of the Year, her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life” (The Washington Post), and are performed regularly by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world.
A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery is a frequent and highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike. At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists and underrepresented composers to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.
Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year. For more information, visit www.jessiemontgomery.com.
