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“This is really rather good. Styled a chamber opera, As One (2014) is also a sequence of 15 songs (with instrumental introduction), scored for two solo singers and string quartet, giving it – as here on disc – the feel of an integrated song-cycle. It succeeds as both forms equally well but its dramatic nature justifies the several notable, acclaimed stagings it has received in the US.”
Read More“a playfully canon-like duet using echoing statements and answers.”
Read More“The whole album manages to be simultaneously a hoot and quite thought-provoking, and it evokes some of the Kronos Quartet’s best work of the 1990s.”
Read More“And Lord love them, they really get into their music. The first piece on this new album, Marc Mellits’ Black, is actually a pretty jaunty piece in fast 6/8 time, with our intrepid bassoonists playing energetically opposite each other in counterpoint (and occasionally in thirds) as the music jogs along.”
Read More“All in all a unique little recital which at least challenges the common notions of this chamber grouping and, frequently, succeeds.”
Read More“Parterre Box's John Yohalem heartily commended Kaminsky's setting of the Campbell/Reed texts: "Her most striking virtue, to an opera lover, is that she knows how to write for the voice, permitting beautiful voices to demonstrate their beauties, hitting emotional chords without torturing the instrument as 'modern' composers of a bygone era so often did." Fortunately, those two beautiful voices he referenced have been captured on the new recording.”
Read More“The final two tracks form an arresting conclusion. Sollima’s Silk Road piece is a virtuoso percussive take on a folk dance that Block dispatches with fierce vitality. He then returns to Bach (Sarabande from Suite No 1), but plays it pizzicato with an unerring jazzman’s feel.”
Read More“What makes the experience so compelling is how naturally each track fits perfectly with the next, even though the ideas and technical requirements may be radically dissimilar. It can be momentarily disorientating, as when the pizz-rich first movement of Ligeti’s Sonata follows the pizz-less Prelude to Bach’s First Suite, but Block’s easy, flowing technique makes each track a universe in itself, including the premiere recording of Sollima’s ferocious tour de force Citarruni, a Silk Road commission from the Taranta Project.”
Read More“There are few musical collaborations as direct and purely distilled as those between a singer and a composer. And when a distinctive compositional aesthetic is matched by a musician whose voice and skills can articulate the music's best qualities, it can be magic. On her first album, Your Clear Eye, soprano Jennifer Zetlan comes close to that transcendence in her interpretations of songs by composer Ricky Ian Gordon.”
Read More“He plays the fourth movement of Saygun’s Partita with richly intoned authority and performs Giovanni Sollima’s Citarruni, from the Taranta Project, a Silkroad commission that proves to be a rocky supercharged opus, percussive and exciting.”
Read More“This is an engaging portfolio of Sybarite5’s recordings, a compilation that reflects well on their instrumental finesse, corporate understanding and expansion of the contemporary repertoire.”
Read More“It’s a party in a box, probably the last thing a lot of people would expect from a contemporary classical string ensemble.”
Read More“Gordon picked the right singer for this recording and the two mesh perfectly. Zetlan’s singing is beautiful and she has exceptionally clear enunciation. (The liner notes have all the texts.) She also burrows into the changing mood of each piece in an outstanding debut recording for the singer.”
Read More“The title may strike lovers of the eclectic as somewhat misleading, given the album’s steady focus on post-minimal styles. However, anyone with a taste for crisp playing and next-level ensemble coordination will find something to love on this record–it is itself an outlier.”
Read More“Sybarite5 is a string quintet that here displays a new chapter in American string chamber music. Listeners who loved Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer’s “Goat Rodeo Sessions” album will eagerly devour this one, exquisitely executed. Leaning close to American fiddle music and taking hints from modern minimalism, this collection is a spectacular one. “
Read More“Not only are they one of the few dedicated quintet line-ups out there, over the past 12 years they have almost single-handedly rejuvenated the repertoire, commissioning new works at a rate of half a dozen per annum, from some of the most interesting voices on the US contemporary music scene.”
Read More“All in all, this remarkably original album by Sybarite5, available directly from https://sybarite5.org provides a sampler of the varied music being written today for string ensemble. Sami Merdinian and Sarah Whitney, violins; Angela Pickett, viola; Laura Metcalf, cello; and Louis Levitt, bass are the group’s members and they are extraordinary as soloists and nothing but miraculous as an ensemble, playing their daunting repertory with warm hearts and cool heads .”
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