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“Played with precision and heart by the Metropolis Ensemble” -National Public RadioDreamscapes, the new Naxos album from Metropolis Ensemble featuring the works of Vivian Fung, is receiving high praise in the media. Here is a roundup of the reviews and commentary on the recording. NPR’s Bob McQuiston lauds the new album on the Deceptive Cadence blog:
“The new album Dreamscapes… features works by one of today’s most eclectic composers, Canadian-born Vivian Fung. John Cage fans will love her solo pieces for prepared piano, while traditionalists should find intriguing the concertos for violin and piano… Violinist Kristin Lee’s performance is not only technically brilliant but her sensitive phrasing and pacing endow the music with both an emotional and intellectual appeal… Pianist Conor Hanick’s performance is laudable for its agility… Both soloists receive magnificent support from conductor Andrew Cyr and the Brooklyn-based Metropolis Ensemble, whose members not only turn in virtuosic performances, but follow their extracurricular instructions to the letter. Also, the recording engineers get a big gold star for a spectacular sounding disc.”
Both local classical stations in New York City have included the new album in recent broadcasts. John Schaefer featured the recordings with its “clear inspiration or influence from Indonesian gamelan music” on
.
And Olivia Giovetti introduced the album on
with the following review:
Two concertos dominate Dreamscapes, Vivian Fung’s new album on Naxos’s Canadian Classics series, and both demonstrate Fung’s prepossessing predilection for cross-cultural conversations. Her own Violin Concerto was written with a symbiosis similar to that of Salonen and Josefowicz’s, responding to Fung’s time spent in Bali with violinist Kristin Lee (the violin often resembles the Balinese gamelan). The Metropolis Ensemble, under Andrew Cyr, gave Fung’s Violin Concerto its world premiere last year and returns here for the recording, which also features Fung’s Piano Concerto, “Dreamscapes.” The study of contrasts is apt for an instrument that can juggle two musical lines at once, and here that honor falls to Q2 Music’s own Conor Hanick.“
Joshua Kosman from the
hails the album and its "welcome lyricism and grace.”
“The scales and rhythms of Balinese and Javanese gamelan suffuse the three pieces represented here… Yet the further Fung strays from that stylistic foundation, the more fascinating and rewarding her music becomes… The year-old Violin Concerto that leads off the disc boasts a certain winsome charm, especially in the fluid performance of soloist Kristin Lee… the final Piano Concerto, in a powerhouse rendition featuring soloist Conor Hanick. Here at last is music of dramatic urgency and depth, in which Fung draws on ideas from gamelan while also adding plenty of her own original material – clangorous, dissonant harmonies, off-kilter rhythms and a sense of wild unpredictability.”
David Patrick Stearns from the
suggests that with the
Violin Concerto
, "Fung is in her own more intimate, often pensive, but frequently playful sound world, which indeed lives up to the album’s title… At every point in the disc, Fung has a strong sense of thematic control and structural overview that suggests more great things to come.” David Olds from
praises the release saying “the disc lives up to my expectations.”
“All three of the works presented here are based on gamelan motifs and melodies giving the disc a wonderful continuity… Like a number of composers before her Fung has taken inspiration from her own travels to Indonesia and truly made this music her own.”
Dreamscapes, the new album from Metropolis Ensemble featuring the works of Vivian Fung, is already turning heads and getting airplay ahead of the formal Naxos release on September 25 (and the Metropolis CD launch event on October 1). Both local classical stations in New York City have included the new album in broadcasts this week. John Schaefer featured the recordings with its “clear inspiration or influence from Indonesian gamelan music” on WNYC’s New Sounds. And Olivia Giovetti introduced the album on WQXR’s The New Canon with the following review:
Two concertos dominate Dreamscapes, Vivian Fung’s new album on Naxos’s Canadian Classics series, and both demonstrate Fung’s prepossessing predilection for cross-cultural conversations. Her own Violin Concerto was written with a symbiosis similar to that of Salonen and Josefowicz’s, responding to Fung’s time spent in Bali with violinist Kristin Lee (the violin often resembles the Balinese gamelan). The Metropolis Ensemble, under Andrew Cyr, gave Fung’s Violin Concerto its world premiere last year and returns here for the recording, which also features Fung’s Piano Concerto, “Dreamscapes.” The study of contrasts is apt for an instrument that can juggle two musical lines at once, and here that honor falls to Q2 Music’s own Conor Hanick.
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Metropolis composer and pianist Timothy Andres plays a live set for Hammered! on WQXR’s online station, Q2, hosted by Metropolis artist Conor Hanick.
“There’s something irresistibly raw and unpredictable about live performance, and when they’re of the caliber we’ll hear this week, few musical experiences can compare. Kicking off the week is a collection of pieces taken from three concerts. Pianist / composer Timothy Andres pairs one of his own works, Everything Is An Onion, with a movement from Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata in a live performance taken from the Ecstatic Music Festival Marathon.”
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WQXR host Nadia Sirota previews an upcoming Q2 Live Concert at the 2011 MATA Festival.
“The 2011 MATA Festival residency at (Le) Poisson Rouge spans three nights… Metropolis Ensemble closes out the festival on May 12 with works ranging from Brad Balliett and Elliot Cole’s hip-hopera, The Rake, to pieces from Chilean-born, 20-year old Remmy Canedo and New York’s own Ryan Carter.”
Metropolis composer Ryan Francis introduces his new album, Works for Piano on back-to-back broadcasts for Hammered! on WQXR’s online station, Q2, hosted by Metropolis artist Conor Hanick, from April 25-29, 2011.
“On this specially curated week of Hammered! we spotlight a new album of piano music by New York-based composer Ryan Anthony Francis. The record features Bang On A Can pianist Vicky Chow, who, with Francis, joins Hammered! throughout the week with insights on this exquisite new body of piano music. Among the diverse cast of characters looking over Francis’s compositional shoulder are author Haruki Murakami, artist M.C. Escher and poet Wilhelm Muller. You can hear their whispers: Escher’s interlocking motivic infinities in Francis’s Jacob’s Ladder, Murakami’s polished elegance in the Wind-Up Bird Preludes, and Muller’s prophetic solemnity in Consolations.”
Six Etudes for Piano (function(){var s=function())(); Consolations (function(){var s=function())(); Wind-Up Bird Preludes (function(){var s=function())(); Moonlight Fantasy (function(){var s=function())(); Read the full article…
Hallucinations, Metropolis Ensemble’s recent production at (Le) Poisson Rouge, was a mind-bending juxtaposition of acoustic, orchestral instruments with electronics.