“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.”
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JESSICA MEYER | Ring Out | #1 Billboard Traditional Classical Albums
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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.”
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“a playfully canon-like duet using echoing statements and answers.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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AS ONE | #3 Billboard Traditional Classical Albums
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“All in all a unique little recital which at least challenges the common notions of this chamber grouping and, frequently, succeeds.”
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“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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PUBLIQUARTET | Freedom and Faith | #4 Billboard Classical Albums
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“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.”
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“Our system is simple: play the music of composers we love, respect and connect with. It just so happens that many of those composers are female and of “diverse” backgrounds. These are our friends, our casual musical heroes. We are constantly on the lookout for new composers, holding emerging composer competitions, compiling lists of potential programs through a two-step panel process for choosing next years’ works. We are constantly figuring out possibilities of re-working the classical canon, meeting other inspiring musicians on our path, and forging collaborations that excite us.”
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“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.”
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“It’s a party in a box, probably the last thing a lot of people would expect from a contemporary classical string ensemble.”
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MIKE BLOCK | Echoes of Bach | #3 Billboard Traditional Classical Albums
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“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.”
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