s e q u i t u r




		Cellos Add Wordless But Lyrical Voices by Allan Kozinn, New York Times 03/04/2008 Stylistic Wanderings and Flirtations With Multimedia And Jazz by Allan Kozinn, New York Times 04/18/2007 Earthy Cuban Sounds, Rendered With An Urban Complexity by Allan Kozinn, New York Times 01/10/2007 A Menu Of Familiar Signposts And A One-Woman Opera by Anne Midgette, New York Times 04/02/2005 American Piano of the 1940s by Jack Sullivan, American Record Guide 01/01/2005 Sequitur-Concertos BBC Music Magazine 04/01/2004 Sequitur-Concertos by Ian Quinn, American Record Guide 01/31/2004 Sequitur-Concertos by Ken Smith, Gramaphone Magazine 01/01/2004 Sequitur-Concertos by Steve Smith, Time Out New York 11/20/2003 Eclecticism and Humor in Works by Lewis Spratlan by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 11/14/2003 Meditations on Power, Old and Freshly by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 05/22/2003 Sequitur's new-music cabarets offer contemporary classics with theatrical flair by Brian WIse, Time Out New York 05/15/2003 Music In Review: Sequitur by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times 05/24/2002 A High-Energy Romp Through The Raucous 1940's by Anne Midgette, New York Times 10/27/2001 Seasons of Squawks on the Crows' Calendar by Anthony Tommasini, The New York Times 03/01/2001 Two Flutists Explore the 20th-Century Repertory by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 10/28/2000 Concert Connects New With Newer by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 04/28/2000 Poetry as the Setting for Meditations on a Child's Death by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 11/16/1999 The Sound of the City by Robert Hilferty, The Village Voice 01/26/1999 Music: Classical and New by Rose Martelli, newyork.citysearch.com 01/18/1999 New Songs Spring Forth In a Lively Mixture by Paul Griffiths, The New York Times 01/13/1999 A Cozy Cabaret Of Comical Sultriness by Justin Davidson, New York Newsday 01/12/1999 Sequitur: George Crumb Concert by Kenneth Goldsmith, New York Press 11/18/1998 Clash Of The Titans: Two Legendary Composers are Feted by Ken Smith, Time Out New York 10/22/1998 Sequitur: Kaye Playhouse Concert by Mark W. Greenfest, The New Music Connoisseur 05/18/1997 New Works Teeming With Fauna by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 02/22/1997

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	Poetry as the Setting for Meditations on a Child's Death by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times 11/16/1999 Sequitur, now in its fourth season, seems more like a collective of musicians interested in new music than a distinct ensemble. But then new-music groups are often organized in unusual ways, and however Sequitur works, its two directors, Harold Meltzer and Sara Laimon, have proved to be inventive programmers with broad stylistic tastes. Three of the four pieces Sequitur included on its program on Thursday evening at Merkin Concert Hall were vocal works on the topic of loss. Eric Zivian's "Music, When Soft Voice Die" (1995-96) was written to commemorate the death of a 3-month-old girl from sudden infant death syndrome. John Harbison's "Due Libri di Motetti di Montale" (1980, revised 1989) was drawn from a song cycle about amorous loss. And Schoenberg's setting of Byron's bitter "Ode to Napoleon" (1941) is, in a way, about the loss of political naïveté. Mr. Zivian's work, a five-movement setting of poetry by Dickinson, Wordsworth, Shelley and D. J. Enright, is scored for soprano, clarinet and piano; the clarinetist in this performance, Jo-Ann Sternberg, was the mother of the child who is memorialized in the work. There is nothing mawkish here: Mr. Zivian's settings are dark and dignified, with gracefully angular vocal lines supported by gently atmospheric piano writing and clarinet counterpoint that weaves around the vocal melodies. Janna Baty was the communicative soprano, and Ms. Laimon was the pianist. Mr. Harbison's work, actually the final two sections of a larger song cycle, is no less melancholy, but is cast in a more otherworldly language. Bright combinations of woodwinds, horn and strings create a quirky, surrealist backdrop in which textures shift constantly. The vocal line has a bittersweet lyricism that Mary Nessinger, a mezzo-soprano, conveyed with remarkably fluidity and beauty of tone. The Schoenberg is a vocal work only in the most literal sense: the Byron poem is spoken rather than sung, although Schoenberg's score gives an indication of the pitches, rhythm and declamation style he expected. Richard Lalli was the reader, and he soon settled into the drama and anger of the text. Schoenberg, of course, used Byron's poem to express his own anger at what was happening in Germany as he wrote the work, and that response is captured in the powerful music for piano and string quartet that accompanies the reading and that Ms. Laimon and the Whitman String Quartet played with a hard-edged, bright tone and abundant energy. The only purely instrumental work on the program was Mauricio Kagel's "Pan" (1985), a cheerful, compact piccolo concerto, based partly in the rising figure that Papageno plays in "The Magic Flute." Patti Monson was the agile piccolo soloist; the Whitman Quartet provided a warm, rich accompaniment.

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