COINCIDENT DANCES for Concert Band by JESSIE MONTGOMERY (USA, 1981)
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[#349] March 30, 2026
United States | 2023 | Concert Band | Grade 5 | 11’40" | Tone poem
Premiered by University of Kansas Wind Ensemble
conducted by Melissa Montgomery on Apr 11, 2023 in Lawrence, Kansas, United States
This piece is available for purchase at Notation Central
“Coincident Dances” by American violinist, composer, chamber musician, and music educator Jessie Montgomery is our Composition of the Week.
Coincident Dances was originally written for orchestra in 2017. The Concert band arrangement was commissioned by members of the College Band Directors National Association in 2023.
This version was premiered on April 11, 2023, at the University of Kansas (Lawrence) by the university’s wind ensemble conducted by Melissa Montgomery.
“Coincident Dances is inspired by the sounds found in New York’s various cultures, capturing the frenetic energy and multicultural aural palette one hears even in a short walk through a New York City neighborhood. The work is a fusion of several different sound-worlds: English consort, samba, mbira dance music from Ghana, swing, and techno. My reason for choosing these styles sometimes stemmed from an actual experience of accidentally hearing a pair simultaneously, which happens most days of the week walking down the streets of New York, or one time when I heard a parked car playing Latin jazz while I had rhythm and blues in my headphones. Some of the pairings are merely experiments. Working in this mode, the orchestra takes on the role of a DJ of a multicultural dance track.” Program notes by Jessie Montgomery
Coincident Dances is scored for standard wind band setting, it has duration of 12 minutes, and it is available on rental at Notation Central.
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. 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. In June 2024, Montgomery 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.
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