Jessie Montgomery - Starburst (Turkish premiere)

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Bursa State Symphony Orchestra
Christopher Russell, conductor

Recorded 14 November 2024 at the Atatürk Kongre ve Kültür Merkezi Merinos - Bursa, Türkiye

Jessie Montgomery, Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year, is a GRAMMY-winning, acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator whose music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of twenty-first century American sound and experience. Her profoundly felt works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful and exploding with life” (The Washington Post) and are performed regularly by leading orchestras and ensembles around the world. In July 2021, she began a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence. Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation.

Jessie Montgomery says of 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 nature of the performing ensemble who premieres the work, The Sphinx Virtuosi, and I wrote the piece with their dynamic in mind."

CHRISTOPHER RUSSELL has received international attention and accolades for his conducting, innovative programming, lectures on music, and his work teaching young conductors. He has conducted orchestras on five continents in a wide range of music from standard repertoire to world premieres to forgotten classics of the past. His repertoire of American orchestral music encompasses over 50 different composers. The Los Angeles Times called him “a forcefully dramatic conductor with a strong technique”.

His guest conducting and other musical activities have often taken him to China including concerts with the Harbin Symphony, the Shenzhen City Philharmonic, and Zhengzhou’s Yellow River Symphony. He has lectured and judged festivals in other Chinese cities including Beijing, Dalian, Hong Kong, and Qingdao. In the 23-24 season, his activities in China include a return engagement with the Harbin Symphony, his conducting debut with the Shenzhen Symphony, and serving as a judge in the 5th Schoenfeld International String Competition.

Other guest conducting appearances include the Orquestra Sinfônica Heliópolis in São Paulo, Brazil, the MasterWorks Festival in Ohio and Indiana, the Thames Youth Orchestra of London, and the Australia’s Sydney Youth Orchestra Philharmonic. Russell conducted at Carnegie Hall, the Sydney Opera House, and famous concert halls in London, Vienna, Prague, Moscow, and Saint Petersburg.

Russell serves as Associate Professor and Chair of the School of Music at Azusa Pacific University (APU) in Southern California. He conducts the APU Symphony Orchestra and leads their graduate instrumental conducting program. He frequently adjudicates in music competitions and festivals both in person and online.

A new music advocate, Russell conducted numerous premieres including the first U.S. performances of works by Tansy Davies, Brett Dean, Jonathan Harvey, Anders Hillborg, Jia Guoping, Magnus Lindberg, Per Nørgård, Kaija Saariaho, and Éric Tanguy. He led the U.S. premiere of Esa-Pekka Salonen’s Stockholm Diary for string orchestra with the APU Symphony.

Russell’s musical interest also extends to performing rarely-heard older music including the U.S. or California premieres of many works from the early and mid-20th century including music by Havergal Brian, Rued Langgaard, Bohuslav Martinu, and Allan Pettersson. Actively conducting American music abroad, he led the Australian and Brazilian premieres of Ives’ 2nd Symphony, the Austrian and Slovak premieres of Ives’ Decoration Day, and Russian premiere of Peter Mennin’s Symphony No. 5. Russell conducted the world premiere of the Symphony in A composed in 1878 by Leopold Damrosch with the APU Symphony, which they recorded for the British record label Toccata Classics.

He is a regular pre-concert lecturer for the Los Angeles Philharmonic where he has interviewed many famous classical artists including Gustavo Dudamel, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Jaap van Zweden, Emanuel Ax, Alisa Weilerstein, and composer John Adams.

Instagram: @russellconductor
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