About

Fast Facts

Jessica is a clarinetist focused on collaboration across all arts. She graduated Northwestern University cum laude with a Bachelor of Music in clarinet performance and Bachelor of Arts in psychology, and earned her Master of Music degree at Bowling Green State University. She also studied chamber music at IES Vienna and the University of Vienna under Stefan Neubauer of the Vienna State Opera House where she fell in love with the power of multi-media opera productions to tell a story. She completed her doctorate of Music at Florida State University where she focused on multimedia arts and the psychology of effective practice and performance.

She has enjoyed being a performer or artist in residence at at Banff Centre for the Arts, Aspen Music Festival, fresh inc., Brevard Music Center, Eastern Music Festival, Musicalta, and Interlochen. She completed her Master of Music degree at Bowling GreShe began her Master of Music degree at Bowling Green State University fall 2017 and pursues interests in the psychology of good performance practice.

Jessica’s Philosophy

Jessica is a clarinetist, educator, and collaborator who pulls from many perspectives including music, dance, theater, improvisation, and psychology to create personal and meaningful performances. She loves collaborating with artists of all backgrounds to make new concert experiences and to learn about art from different perspectives.

Past projects have included: Part of Me is Water, an narrative album of poetry and contemporary clarinet works on mental health and resilience; The Space Around Us: A Musical Meditation on Climate Change, combining music, text, and visual art at the FSU Museum of Fine Art; a fully staged production of the opera Kopernikus at the Banff Centre; and Ritual/Black Swirls for clarinets with choreography at Outside the Box new music festival. She has premiered 13 new works, including Fear a Bhata for dancing clarinet and dancer with ME Dance.

With a background in psychology, Jessica is passionate about healthy work toward peak performance in music pedagogy. She uses research-based theories of learning and performance to help musicians have healthy, productive, and fulfilling experiences with performance. Pedagogical projects have ranged from workshops on the psychological aspects of effective performance preparation to a doctoral treatise on the memory systems of skilled music performance.

As founder of Chamber Music with Friends, inc, she fostered collaboration between artists of all backgrounds for fun, welcoming, and unique shows among Friends. Through CMwF Jessica led projects featuring dancers, actors, folk musicians, visual artists, composers and classical musicians who were and many classically trained musician Friends. She believes the most important Friendships, however, are with audience members and she talking with audiences about her works or answering questions after shows.

Her past projects outside CMwF have also been focused on collaboration and story-telling. In 2017 she performed on stage memorized as a cast member in Banff Centre‘s production of Kopernikus under the team from Against the Grain. In 2016 she collaborated with Chelsea Komschlies to adapt her folk-inspired violin solo, Fear A Bhata, for clarinet. She then teamed with ME Theater to present Fear A Bhata for dancer and dancing clarinet. Other projects included teaming with actress Rachel Geistfeld to present John Steinmetz’s Odiepundle VI for clarinet and friend, and Tom Johnsohn’s Bedtime Stories as well as premiering works by other contemporary composers such as Alex Cooke, Craig Davis Pinson, and Daniel Harrison, and Andy Normann.

In her hometown of Satellite Beach, Florida, Jessica has served as board member and clarinetist with Central Florida Winds as well as docent at the Foosaner Art Museum. She has performed with the Space Coast Symphony Orchestra and Wind Symphony, Melbourne Community Orchestra, Holy Name of Jesus Players, and other local organizations. She loves working with high school students through Chamber Music with Friends, private lessons, or teaching at schools.

Contact Jessica at jessicapollackclarinet@gmail.com