“Not a note feels wasted in Jessie Montgomery’s Strum, a jaunty, seven-minute curtain-raiser offered in versions for string quartet and string orchestra. The musical economy is no accident: ‘Strum is the culminating result of several versions of a string quintet I wrote in 2006,’ Montgomery explained in a program note. The final tweaks were made for the Catalyst Quartet, which performed it at the Sphinx Competition in 2012 and recorded it soon after. The orchestral version has received nearly 100 performances throughout North America and Europe, according to the composer’s website.”