CQ 2024: big dog little dog

is thrilled to present Constellation, our 2024 Pride Month celebration of queer community, diversity, and excellence in chamber music! Featuring multiple live performances and workshops every day, ChamberQUEER 2024: Constellation runs Tuesday, June 11 through Sunday, June 16 at MITU580.

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big dog little dog is the mild-melding duo project of violinist/composer Jessie Montgomery and bassist/songwriter Eleonore Oppenheim. Their music has been described many ways, but perhaps the most apt so far has been “post-minimalist groove americana.” The pair use an improvisational composition technique that draws on many genres and their experience as native New Yorkers to create lush, cinematic soundscapes that are by turns sweeping and achingly intimate.

, 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. Her growing body of work includes solo, chamber, vocal, and orchestral works, as well as collaborations with distinguished choreographers. She is currently visiting faculty at the Vanderbilt University Blair School of Music, Bard College, and The New School, and has been affiliated with the Sphinx Organization since 1999 in a variety of roles including composer-in-residence for Sphinx Virtuosi, its 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 doctoral candidate in music composition at Princeton University.

is a genre-surfing musical polyglot. In addition to bdld, her current projects include an acoustic trio with art-pop auteur Glasser and multi-instrumentalist Robbie Lee, and the avant folk-jazz supergroup the Hands Free (with James Moore, Caroline Shaw, and Nathan Koci). Eleonore has worked with established composers including Philip Glass, Steve Reich, and Meredith Monk, in Missy Mazzoli’s “all-star, all female” bandsemble Victoire and Florent Ghys’ low strings and drums powerhouse Bonjour, with the Bang on a Can All-Stars, on Broadway, and with many artists from the indie rock, jazz, and folk worlds. She currently runs a new music program for teens,“Face the Music” (Kaufman Music Center) and teaches and manages ensembles at Special Music High School.

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