Out of Blue
Excerpt from Chelsea Music Festival
Artwork by Lorna Simpson
Current projects and releases
STOP LOOK LISTEN
Above: Couple samples from 2020 – 2021 output. Includes excerpts from piano suite, A Bee in the Hollow. Mays performing piano improv on the first clip. Pianist Sarah Bob featured on all subsequent videos. All visuals by Jessica Mays.
“For me, as a composer, creative, and human being, it’s been an overwhelmingly difficult (and painful) year to feel motivated, so I’ve been exploring new outlets for inspiration. I’m learning just how important it is to slow down and appreciate the moment …
I want this … to serve as a moment of stopping, a moment of rest.” — Jessica Mays 2020
looking back
bear
As I rise,
See the fall
In my stride Only grow
From the crawl In my hide.
With the teeth
Gagging back, Grimace wide
Little Bear
Bounding up,
With the whites In her eyes –
Bigger rock Up above:
“Gotta knack For the climb.”
— Jessica Mays
elegy
Performed by the BlackBox Ensemble Leonard Bopp, Conductor
Purchase the Blackbox Ensemble album Elegy HERE
Looking forward
ANTHEM FOR GO (CHAMBER)
2021 NATIONAL SYMPHONY KENNEDY CENTER WASHINGTON DC
FEAT. NATIONAL SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
FOR NANAE
SUMMER 2021 EX-AEQUO “CHANGING THE CANON” RECORDING
FEAT. NANAE FUJIWARA (GUITAR)
LE CHAOS AVANT LA CRÉATION
FALL 2021 ESCAPEVELOCITY ST. PETERSBURG (FL)
FEAT. GIANCARLO LATTA (VIOLIN) & ROBERT FLEITZ (PIANO)
Baobab
Oct 24th (7:00pm), 25th (7:30pm)
AI RHYTHM EVOLUTION: LISA PEGHER x ICEBERG orlando (fl)
FEAT. LISA PEGHER
bio
Jessica Mays is a composer, pianist and songwriter based in New York City and her hometown of Denver, Colorado. Her music pulls inspiration from the worlds of jazz, pop, contemporary classical and avant-garde, evoking a blended sound that is both visceral and distantly familiar.
Mays’s music has been performed both locally and abroad, by a wide variety of soloists, ensembles and orchestras including the New York Philharmonic, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Playground Ensemble, Ensemble Paramirabo, Ensemble Lunatik, Blackbox Ensemble, Thin Edge New Music Collective, The Labo de musique contemporaine de Montréal and many others. She has been featured by a variety of festivals as composer and performer including the Chelsea Music Festival, Loon Lake Live, and the Cluster Music Festival. She has also written arrangements for both large and small forces on a variety of projects with the Colorado Symphony. Her music has received praise from such major publications as the Boston Globe and the Boston Musical Intelligencer.
