Performance Today selects Jessie Montgomery as 2025 Classical Woman of the Year
Mar 31, 2025
ST. PAUL, Minn., March 31 — YourClassical’s Performance Today®, the national classical music radio program hosted by Fred Child from American Public Media, announced today that Jessie Montgomery has been named the 2025 Classical Woman of the Year. This prestigious title is awarded to exceptional women who have made significant contributions to the world of classical music and who provide inspiration for listeners.
"I’m thrilled that Jessie Montgomery is our 2025 Performance Today Classical Woman of the Year,” said Fred Child, host and senior editor of Performance Today. “She is a multi-dimensional musical artist, composer, violinist, and educator, whose work is having a tremendous positive impact on today's musical scene, and on the next generation of musicians and citizens. She is a prolific composer of music rooted in her personal and cultural history, and creates works that help us understand ourselves and reflect in meaningful ways on the times we live in."
“She is equally committed to education, as founder of the Young Composers Initiative in Chicago, supporting emerging teenage artists. Her unique combination of musical artistry, curation, creation, and engagement brightens and inspires our world. It’s with great pleasure that we recognize Jessie Montgomery with this well-deserved award.”
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, making her an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. 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. In June 2024, she concluded a three-year appointment as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence.
A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and 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. She serves on the Composition and Music Technology faculty at Northwestern University’s Bienen School of Music.
The recognition of Montgomery as the 2025 Classical Woman of the Year highlights not only her individual achievements, but also the importance of supporting and celebrating women in the arts. The Performance Today staff is honored to select Montgomery and recognize her as a role model and key figure in the classical music community.
Montgomery will be recognized on the March 31 episode of Performance Today, including a conversation with Child about her career and accomplishments.
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YourClassical® is a collection of curated classical music listening experiences and information produced by Minnesota Public Radio and American Public Media Group. YourClassical provides audiences with the music they love through terrestrial broadcasts and multiple web-based platforms. Nationally syndicated YourClassical programs include Pipedreams®, SymphonyCast®, Composers Datebook® and Performance Today®, and are in addition to the Radio, Lullaby, Relax, Peaceful Piano, and Holiday audio streams that can be found at yourclassical.org. Regional music programming produced by YourClassical MPR®, is a trusted companion for listeners across Minnesota on broadcast radio, web interfaces and live events. YourClassical MPR’s Kid’s Initiatives strives to inspire the next generation of music fans and artists through in-school learning experiences, educational content, and resources for teachers and parents. Each week, over 2.3 million people listen to YourClassical. Learn more and listen at yourclassical.org.