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“The wonderfully monikered fivesome has emerged over the last 15 years as one of America’s hippest new music ensembles thanks to a series of smart commissions and eclectic recordings such as 2017’s uber-groovy Outliers. Their latest album showcases a host of new music for string quintet – in their case, a string quartet plus double bass – and proves that they’re just as good live.”
Read More“As one might expect, the resulting collage of sounds, words, and noises is by turns eerie, funny, disconcerting, and deeply beautiful. “
Read More“there’s a refreshing freedom and a sense of exploration in his beautiful playing here, a feeling of “let’s see where this goes” with delightful results.”
Read More“I've rarely heard the Suite No 6 Prelude's earthy lilt unfold to Block's supple degree”
Read More“Jessica Meyer - Ring Out In which supremely talented violist Meyer reveals herself as a delightfully varied, and emotionally connected, composer.”
Read More“Jessica Meyer is the violist in the new-music collective counter)induction, a New York group that includes a core ensemble for performances, non-playing composers who are on the roster and write for the ensemble, and musicians like Meyer, who both play and compose. Her collection, Ring Out (Bright Shiny Things) is a superb introductory sampler that touches on a variety of Meyer’s compositional concerns.”
Read More“When I began composing, I did not recognize at the time where this deep need to do so came from … I knew that I wrote music in response to events in my life, but I did not realize until recently that the process of becoming a composer was also the catalyst for growing into a new version of myself …” Jessica has told The Violin Channel."
Read More“The song takes on a different feel in this all-strings setting, but Block and company maintain the eerie, chilling vibe of Monroe’s recording by bringing the lonesome.”
Read More“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.”
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