Out of Blue        

Excerpt from Chelsea Music Festival

Artwork by Lorna Simpson

Panel 1

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

Panel 2

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

Commissioned by the Castle of Our Skins concert series and their 2018 program themed around black feminism and female empowerment.

elegy

Performed by the BlackBox Ensemble Leonard Bopp, Conductor

Dedicated to the memory of my grandmother.

Purchase the Blackbox Ensemble album Elegy HERE

Panel 3

Looking forward

IMG_3688_Facetune_20-10-2018-14-54-24

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

Panel 4

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.