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Jessie Montgomery

Jessie Montgomery is an acclaimed composer, violinist, and educator. She is the recipient of the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation and the Sphinx Medal of Excellence, and her works are performed frequently around the world by leading musicians and ensembles. Her music interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Her works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life” (The Washington Post). Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works. Some recent highlights include Shift, Change, Turn (2019), commissioned by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra; Coincident Dances (2018) for the Chicago Sinfonietta; and Banner (2014)—written to mark the 200th anniversary of “The Star-Spangled Banner”—which was presented in its United Kingdom premiere at the BBC Proms on August 7, 2021. Summer 2021 brought a varied slate of premiere performances, including Five Freedom Songs, a song cycle conceived with and written for soprano Julia Bullock, for Sun Valley and Grand Teton Music Festivals, San Francisco and Kansas City Symphonies, Boston and New Haven Symphony Orchestras, and the Virginia Arts Festival (August 7); a site-specific collaboration with Bard SummerScape Festival and Pam Tanowitz Dance, I was waiting for the echo of a better day (July 8); and Passacaglia, a flute quartet for the National Flute Association’s 49th annual convention (August 13). Since 1999, she has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization, which supports young African American and Latinx string players, and has served as composer-in-residence for the Sphinx Virtuosi, the Organization’s flagship professional touring ensemble. A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery holds degrees from The Juilliard School and New York University, and is currently a PhD candidate in music composition at Princeton University. She has served as a professor of violin and composition at the New School, and in May 2021, she began her three-year appointment as the Mead Composer-in-Residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.


BM, The Juilliard School; MM, New York University; graduate fellow in music composition, Princeton University. (2022– ) Composer in Residence.

[Photo by Jiyang Chen]

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Joan Patenaude-Yarnell

Following her debut with the Canadian Opera Company as Micaela in Carmen, this Canadian-born soprano joined both the New York City and San Francisco Operas. She has also sung with opera companies throughout North America and Europe. Her roles have included Violetta in La Traviata, Alice Ford in Falstaff, Gilda in Rigoletto, Nedda in I Pagliacci, the title role in Suor Angelica, Mimì in La Bohème, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Elle in La Voix Humaine, and Héro in Béatrice et Bénédict. As a recitalist she performed internationally under the auspices of the Canadian Government, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Les Jeunesses musicales, and the United States Department of State. With orchestra she sang under the batons of Sir Charles Mackerras, Charles Dutoit, Seiji Ozawa, Julius Rudel, and James De Preist. Her recordings include Songs of the Great Opera Composers with Mikael Eliasen, pianist, on the Musical Heritage Society label, as well as releases on the C.B.C. International Series and Vanguard labels. In addition to her position at Bard Conservatory, Miss Patenaude-Yarnell also serves on the voice faculties of Manhattan School of Music and the Curtis Institute of Music. Her students perform with the Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Paris Opéra, Chicago Lyric Opera, and Stuttgart Opera and are participants in the young artists programs at Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Center (Zurich, Switzerland), and Volksoper (Vienna). Several of her students are current winners of the George London Foundation Awards, Marilyn Horne Foundation Awards, and Puccini Foundation Awards, as well as the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions First Prize Winner, 2004. She has presented her master class “The Principals of Bel Canto” throughout the U.S. and Canada. In the 2014-15 season Miss Patenaude-Yarnell has given master classes in the Art of Bel Canto at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) Young Artists Program, Princeton University, and the University of Southern Ontario (Canada). She is presenting classes in spring 2015 at Guild Hall (London, England), the Royal Welsh College of Music/Drama (Cardiff, Wales), and Oberlin in Italy (Arezzo, Italy).



For more information about Ms. Patenaude-Yarnell and her teaching philosophy, please visit singingwithmanyvoices.com.