ABOUT

Jessica Krash is a native of Washington, DC and continues to find it an interesting and challenging place to think about worldview in music and art. She was awarded the 2010 “Wammie” for Classical Composer (Washington Area Music Association’s version of a Grammy). Her work has appeared in traditional and experimental concerts and radio in the US, Europe, and Asia, including a work for dancers and saxophones on Washington’s canal in a thunderstorm.  Jessica’s 2018 chamber and vocal music CD (Albany Records) was praised by the Wall Street Journal, Gramophone, and Fanfare, was “Recording of the Month” in Voix des Arts, and was named in “10 of the Best New Releases in 2018” by The Daffodil Perspective. Her solo piano CD (Ravello/Capstone Records) was listed by Tim Page in The Washington Post and Detroit News as one of the most interesting recordings of 2006. 

Jessica has given series of lectures at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Library of Congress, and NIH on topics of music and the brain, music history, and the insights we get from “dangerous music,” music that was understood as powerful enough to change society.  She has given several series of chamber music master classes at Strathmore.

Jessica’s compositions have been commissioned by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Trimitas State Wind Orchestra of Lithuania, the National Museum of Women in the Arts,  The City Choir of Washington, the 21st Century Consort,  J.T. Martin,  Women’s Community Orchestra of Oakland (CA),  the Johansen International Competition for Young String Players, Robert DiLutis,  and Catherine Kautsky, among others. 

Jessica has directed several organizations, including the Washington chapter of the American Composers Forum, and Chamber Music Weekend at the Levine School of Music, and for over 30 years, a chamber music seminar combining amateur and professional musicians. She has her own music studio with piano, composition and theory students of all ages.  She has taught at the University of Maryland, George Mason University, the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (at NIH), and the Levine School of Music. For 28 years,  Jessica taught at George Washington University, where she  developed and taught new courses on “dangerous music,” contemporary music, and 19th-century chamber music, in addition to the survey music history course, ear training and class piano.

As a pianist, Jessica has played chamber music with a number of fine musicians, including Tanya Anisimova, Ian Swensen, Kolja Blacher, Emily Noel, Elisabeth Adkins, James Ross, Martha Stoddard, and Igor Gavrysh. Jessica also enjoys collaborating with artists from other media, and has done projects with director Timothy Nelson, poet Mary Maxwell, writer Ellen Cassedy, choregraphers Nancy Havlik, Clara Maxwell, and Tony Powell, and filmmaker Steve Schecter.

Jessica graduated with high honors from Harvard College, earned a master’s degree in piano from Juilliard, and a doctorate in composition from the University of Maryland. She also studied at MIT with Jeanne Bamberger, doing research in the philosophical and cognitive issues underlying musical understanding.