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

		For the most recent articles and review archives click here


	Clash Of The Titans: Two Legendary Composers are Feted by Ken Smith, Time Out New York 10/22/1998 In this corner, just shy of his 90th birthday and brandishing a reputation as America's greatest living composer, stands Elliot Carter. In the opposite corner, turning a sprightly 69 on Saturday, October 24, and still bearing the banner of the '60s avant-garde, stands George Crumb. Both men will be honored at Miller Theatre's New Works October series this week: Speculum Musicae will present a 90th-birthday tribute to Carter, and the instrumental group Sequitur will play an all-Crumb concert (other Carter birthday celebrations are listed below). So let the match begin. Whereas Carter's scores are meticulous, Crumbs leave room for interpretation. While Carter's music thrives on complexity, Crumb is almost slavishly devoted to surface sonorities-an approach that has gotten his work branded as ear candy by some modernists. Composer Ned Rorem (who turned 75 earlier this month and will be feted at Miller, on Thursday 22) once called Crumb's music "six effects in search of a mind." "In a way, the two composers are opposites, and in a way, they're not," says guitarist David Starobin, who has recorded Carter's Changes and performed Crumb's Mundus Canis (with the composer playing percussion) this month at the Manhattan School of Music. "They're both Renaissance men, literate musicians who bring a considerable knowledge of history to their work. Both came into contact with modernism, and it made them rethink what music could be. I think a lot of the difference has to do with geography." Having grown up on the Upper West Side, Carter is the epitome of the East Coast intellectual. Crumb, who was born in West Virginia, is not exactly a mountain man, but his outlook and ear are certainly more folksy and less intellectually loaded. Ever since Virgil Thomson observed that Carter's First String Quartet seemed like "four intrinsically integrated solos, all going on at the same time," critics have likened Carter's music lines to characters in an abstract drama. It takes a group with the commitment of Speculum Musicae, which has premiered most of Carter's recent chamber works and spent a great deal of time with the composer, to make those lines come alive. Speculum has been honoring Carter in concert every five years since his 75th birthday. The latest tribute spans 60 years worth of works and will include the U.S. premieres of Lumien and Tempo e Tempi. Crumb's works have so many highly theatrical elements that they rarely come alive when performed by musicians who treat the performance as just another gig. But Sequitur, which explores the connections between classical music and theater, is the perfect ensemble to perform such work. Most of the program in its Crumb concert comes from 1970, when the composer was at his peak. Selections include Black Angels, for amplified string quartet, and Ancient Voices of Children, whose nontraditional instrumentation includes harp, toy piano, harmonica and musical saw. Crumb largely withdrew from the concert world just as Carter was in full bloom, and he returned to composing on a much more limited basis only in the mid-'80s. The reason, he says, was that he was balancing teaching at the University of Pennsylvania with outside lectures, which left little room for composing. "It wasn't a matter of time; it was a matter of energy," he says. "When you're young, you can do anything. Besides, composing has always been a young person's game. If I were Mozart, I'd have been dead for 45 years now." True. But if he were Elliot Carter, he'd just be entering the next round.

	For the most recent articles click here