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“What sets this recording apart from the Jesse McReynolds disc is the mid-century folk revival, which opened up folk songs to original or even experimental interpretation. Either such interpretations work, or they don't. As the saying goes, the worst thing you can do to a folk song is not to sing it. Block is kind to the music in that way, and beyond that, he captures its spirit even in settings far removed from the originals.”
Read MoreRING OUT | GRAMOPHONE
"In each of Jessica Meyer’s differently configured works from the last five years, knife-edge anticipation opens on to unexpected, often ecstatic musical realms, always with a personal touch and imaginatively written for the instruments."
Read MoreRING OUT | Rafael's Music Notes
"...music that is endlessly inventive, rules-defying, surprising, lyrical when called for, and even bluntly forceful at times. The composer is a young violist who not long ago decided that yet another gig playing her fiddle would not completely fulfill her artistic impulses. And then she wrote."
Read MoreRING OUT | Textura
"The New York-based artist infuses her first composer-portrait album with a fierce, impassioned attack; in doing so, she no doubt inspired those joining her to do the same...contrasts of dynamics, tempo, and texture are exploited plentifully, the music alternating rapidly between elegiac and raw."
Read More“Anything goes in the performances at times, with normal string playing being replaced by a whistle, unison singing and chanting, rhythmic clapping and percussive effects on the instrument bodies in some vibrant and decidedly upbeat music. “
Read More“Darker Things, their debut album, displays their admirable technique and musicality, as well as the surprising tonal, timbral and emotional range possible on just two bassoons.”
Read More“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.”
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