By David Templeton | From the January/February 2026 issue of Strings
When Grammy-winning violinist and composer Jessie Montgomery began creating her own chamber music, she initially gave little thought to how her compositions might make their way past her own concerts as a soloist or as a member violinist with Catalyst String Quartet, a position she held from 2012 to 2020. When other artists began approaching her, asking to play some of those pieces, though, she knew it was time to make some serious business decisions.
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The first task? To ensure control of her creations by essentially becoming her own publisher and distributor. What Montgomery has learned in doing that makes her an excellent example for rising composers considering a similar path.
“For me, it all happened very organically,” Montgomery says. “I was very active as a string quartet player, right up until I left Catalyst, and my composing had really been picking up. I had definitely moved into a new phase, composing a lot in the last two years of my time with them.” During her time with Catalyst, among other pieces, Montgomery had written “Strum,” “Source Code,” and “In Color,” all pieces for string quartet or quintet, and two others—“Starburst” and “Banner”—written for string orchestra.
“Those last compositions are now two of my most performed pieces,” she acknowledges. “But when it started, I was suddenly getting all of these requests from different folks, requests from ensembles, groups like A Far Cry, some of them I’d been working closely with since college. I realized that it had become necessary to have some structure in place that allowed me to make my music more available to rent and distribute.”
For about five to six years, she handled the details of renting out her work, acting as her own agent. Eventually, she reached out to Philip Rothman of NYC Music Services, whom she asked for help in making “Starburst” and “Banner” available. “It all started with those two pieces,” she says, “and as I started writing more and creating more, Philip has become my full-time publishing agent, handling all of my rentals, sales, and licensing.”
The majority of the pieces Montgomery has composed began as commissions, so almost everything that she has made available for licensing through her website, jessiemontgomery.com, has been publicly performed or recorded before it ended up on the site. That is not always the case for some emerging composers, who write a piece on their own and then go looking for someone to perform it.
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“It’s not a bad place to be, the whole musical commissioning stream,” she says, “but at the place I am in my career right now, I’m trying to find more time to write projects that are formed outside the commissioning and deadline model. The good news is that, whatever pieces I do write during this time, anything I write that is not yet published, I can decide when and how to do that.”
Because Montgomery’s work is self-published, she maintains the copyright on all of her compositions, including commissions. In more traditional structures, a major music publishing house would basically buy the copyright of a new piece, and the composer would earn a percentage of any profits from its licensing and distribution. Though fairly unusual, with some commissioning models, the commissioner has a relationship with a publisher and the copyright is shared.
The bottom line: Always read every contract carefully and never sign anything agreeing to something you do not fully understand. “Composers who care to have full ownership of their work should be really considerate when looking at their contracts to see if there is anything in there saying their commissioner is owed any other copyright,” Montgomery says. She adds that when a composer begins to work inside the opera world, the rules shift a bit, and though still rare, it’s less unheard of for an established opera company to expect to maintain some ownership of the work.
“It can happen, so just be really considerate regarding anything you sign,” she says. “The best thing a young composer can do is to become familiar with what’s actually involved in self-publishing, and what’s involved in having to furnish your own work.”
During the time she was acting as her own agent, Montgomery developed what she calls “a pretty basic setup.” After copying and formatting her scores, she would have them printed and bound at a place like FedEx and would then mail them out herself. “I set up an online store on my website,” she says. “Nowadays it links directly to Philip, but when I was starting out, it directed to Square. I had a simple Square account, with the Square cashier’s thing on my site, with a link to all my music. When I’d get an order, I’d go to the printer, print ’em out, and send ’em out. But once I started getting a lot of orders, that process became too tedious and time-consuming, which is when I turned to Philip. But I learned a lot about what is necessary in those situations.”
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Increasingly, those ordering the music prefer an electronic PDF, and that’s another thing a young composer needs to become familiar with. “It’s great, actually, because it saves the person renting the music from having to pay the shipping fees, which can be expensive, especially if you’re overseas, and it’s a whole lot easier for the self-publishing composer to just email the music,” she says. “There are a lot of composers who only use PDFs, which I do sometimes, but most of the time, my music is still sent out as paper scores.”
Though she’s never had any hands-on experience with them, Montgomery acknowledges that there are certain music publishing services, such as ArrangeMe.com and J.W. Pepper’s MyScore program, where composers can upload their works in the hopes that someone might discover them there and purchase them through that site. “What I understand is that they operate much the way my structure does, where you use them as a distributor, who is a second entity, and you retain all your copyright,” she says. “They are just there to facilitate the transaction and the transfer of your music. I think it’s a wonderful resource for young composers. If I’d had something like that when I was coming up as a composer, I’d have been very curious about it.”
The other major element that a young composer needs to learn as a self-publisher is how to market their work. “That’s so important,” Montgomery says. “With those kinds of self-publishing sites we were just talking about, you might have your work there, but if people are going to find it there, they need to know so they can look for it. And that’s all about marketing, promoting yourself all the time, which a lot of creative people don’t love doing. There’s a lot of word-of-mouth to it: It’s going to concerts, being a part of a community of artists and composers, making sure that people know what you are doing.”
In Montgomery’s case, she had a number of pieces, like “Strum,” that she’d been performing herself as part of her ensemble, so every new concert was, in a way, its own little promotional effort. “Networking and self-promotion and performing, they are all intertwined,” she says. “You just have to keep generating the energy. It’s hard work. It’s diligence. It’s using social media well, posting clips of your work, meeting other artists who might then mention you to another artist, building a presence within your community of artists.”
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One thing she does not necessarily recommend for an unknown composer is to cold-call their favorite ensemble and offer to show them their unpublished, unperformed work, hoping that the group might want to give it a world premiere. “I mean, that does happen, sometimes, I guess,” she says. “I did that myself when I was younger. My big embarrassing story is that I once cold-called Kronos Quartet. That was awkward—but it was a valuable learning experience. And now some of the Kronos Quartet members are among my greatest friends. So I don’t regret it. It’s important to get comfortable with taking risks, but it’s definitely not the best way.”
If a young composer does feel comfortable with that style of self-promotion, Montgomery recommends approaching other young musicians, perhaps a string quartet that is just starting out. “They may be more open to being approached by a composer,” she says. “In fact, they might find it really exciting that an emerging composer thinks their work would be in good hands with that new quartet.”
She also recommends searching for ensembles that play new music, many of which regularly put out open calls for new scores. “These programs are application-based,” Montgomery says, “and a lot of times, the ensembles create these opportunities just so they can discover new, unknown talent, people who have an interesting voice that they want to encourage.”
The most important piece of advice Montgomery has for young composers who are considering self-publishing and distributing their work is to just start doing it. “You have to begin this journey where you are,” she says. “If you have one piece that you’ve written, then put that one piece on your website, and promote it, and see what happens. Look at the resources right in front of you. Most of us have access to the internet, and that’s a perfectly reasonable place to start. Careers are built over time, with lots of persistence. But you have to start where you are, and for most young composers, that means self-publishing.”
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