Especially impressive was the other piece here: Sebastian Currier's "Static (2003)." On the heels of Copland, Mr. Currier's six movements slowed our musical clocks to the speed of a passing cloud. Chords drone, decorated by flute, clarinet and piano figures. There are occasional frantic outbursts, but more characteristic is long, ardent melody….. "Static" shows a delicate ear for sound colors achieved by simple combinations; they do more with less. This is music with a distinctive voice.
-New York Times
Though this work [Time Machines] is driven by Mr. Currier’s handling of rhythm and time, the music’s harmonic allure and textural richness were often its most striking qualities. With his acute ear and sensitivity to color, whole passages of the piece were rapturously beautiful, especially the mystical final movement, “Harmonic Time.” Ms. Mutter played magnificently. During the ovation she kept deferring to and applauding Mr. Currier.
-New York Times
Sebastian Currier's "Sleepers and Dreamers," impressed as a strong, colorful and ingeniously crafted addition to the contemporary choral-orchestral repertory.…”Sleepers and Dreamers" deserves the widest possible audience, and, if there's any justice in the classical music world, will travel far beyond the city that gave it birth. ……..From the gentle electronic pulsations and wordless choral murmurs that begin the piece, to the lapping waves of voices, orchestra and synthesized sounds that close it, "Sleepers and Dreamers" suspends the listener into a dream world like no other, at once weird and beautiful…..
-Chicago Tribune
Confronting the past: it's something all classical music does implicitly. In his ''Quartetset,'' Sebastian Currie does it head-on, from the very opening. A lilting, antic figure that evokes Classical Vienna is immediately subverted by a questioning violin that thrusts its way out of the music's pat form with a hint of neurosis, as if wondering where it should fit. This sets the tone for a dialogue between the Classical tradition and contemporary music, executed in interesting, idiomatic string quartet writing that is eminently listenable -- no mean feat.
- New York Times
Say it plainly -- Sebastian Currier's "Night Time" for violin and harp ……is one of the best pieces of contemporary classical music to be played in Washington in a long time. Lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition and yet absolutely new, "Night Time" is set in five short movements, titled "Dusk," "Sleepless," "Vespers," "Nightwind" and "Starlight." It is written so carefully and specifically for the two instruments that one cannot imagine it any other way….. Currier doesn't waste a note in this set of modern nocturnes, and the performance, by violinist Elisabeth Adkins and harpist Susan Robinson, left nothing to be desired in its evocations of rest and restlessness, quietude and mystery.
-Washington Post
Mr. Currier won the Grawemeyer Award for “Static” (2003), and he has already composed “Aftersong” (1994) and “Time Machines (2007) for Ms. Mutter. His smartly constructed variations take a handful of generic pre-smartphone ringtones and turn them into an almost-passacaglia for violin and double bass that plays with harmonic partials and intersperses the ringtones with quick, semiquaver runs...
-New York Times
The nature of Sebastian Currier’s piano music - ebullient, choreographic and wonderfully inventive - announces itself from the first measures of the 1988 Piano Sonata that opens this beguiling disc. The writing is densely packed into the keyboard, but crisp melodic themes and rhythmic interplay register clearly through the busy textures. And the more you listen, the more engrossing the effect becomes. In a series of splendid performances, pianist Laura Melton brings out all the rambunctious finesse of the five-movement sonata and the thoughtful, intricately cross-referenced "Departures and Arrivals." Currier deftly walks a line between dry neo-Classicism and a more explosively messy emotional palette, and Melton traces it well. The disc concludes in a burst of witty high spirits, with "Scarlatti Cadences" - pressing the old master's distinctive formulas into service in new ways - and the hyperactive "Brainstorm."
-San Francisco Chronicle
Currier’s music has been a revelation this year and, hopefully, he will begin to see the larger audience he deserves here in Britain, to join that of his native USA and elsewhere. The pieces performed tonight were a terrific showcase of BBC NOW at its hugely enjoyable, virtuosic best. The opening Microsymph was a model of compressed symphonic form, with a dazzling array of colours, ideas and sounds; not one of which felt ill-judged or extraneous to Currier’s purpose – which impressive feat was repeated in the second half’s Quanta. Whereas Microsymph whirled through a genuine five movement symphony in just ten minutes, complete with spectral waltzes, radiant adagio and bravura fanfares intercut by a ticking clock motif (‘a bit like Leonard Bernstein on speed’ according to one enthralled audience member), Quanta took concision to new heights, as it were, in its succession of epigrammatic fragments inspired by the composer’s travels in China and, specifically, by written Chinese characters. The architecture of this latter piece, too, showed real brilliance as myriad tiny, contrasting fragments, separated by silent pauses, gradually coalesced into a larger form. Both pieces were adroit and witty in a refreshingly unselfconscious way and were, above all, distinguished by a strongly sophisticated sense of harmony that seems all too rare in contemporary music.
-Wales Art Review
The second work, "Nightmaze," had a tighter concept behind it.......Currier's rich and imaginative music sets the right tone, with its fractured and dissonant baroque-like gestures leading off like highway exits into the void and hinting at distant reservoirs of emotion and yearning......
-New York Times
These were performances for connoisseurs. So was the British premiere of Sebastian Currier’s “Aftersong.” If all his pieces are as emotionally charged and ingenious in their use of rethought tonality as this, give me more.
-London Times
The most striking work performed was the newest, a piano sonata … by Sebastian Currier. The sonata's five connected movements are evocations of emotional states; ''Bold and Defiant,'' ''Anxious'' and ''Suppressed'' are among the titles, and Mr. Currier evokes them vividly. His language is expressively dissonant, and often couched in thick quickly changing textures. In the finale, a set of variations in which the passions of the foregoing movements are reprised, the composer's sense of structure and movement is impeccable.
-New York Times
-New York Times
Though this work [Time Machines] is driven by Mr. Currier’s handling of rhythm and time, the music’s harmonic allure and textural richness were often its most striking qualities. With his acute ear and sensitivity to color, whole passages of the piece were rapturously beautiful, especially the mystical final movement, “Harmonic Time.” Ms. Mutter played magnificently. During the ovation she kept deferring to and applauding Mr. Currier.
-New York Times
Sebastian Currier's "Sleepers and Dreamers," impressed as a strong, colorful and ingeniously crafted addition to the contemporary choral-orchestral repertory.…”Sleepers and Dreamers" deserves the widest possible audience, and, if there's any justice in the classical music world, will travel far beyond the city that gave it birth. ……..From the gentle electronic pulsations and wordless choral murmurs that begin the piece, to the lapping waves of voices, orchestra and synthesized sounds that close it, "Sleepers and Dreamers" suspends the listener into a dream world like no other, at once weird and beautiful…..
-Chicago Tribune
Confronting the past: it's something all classical music does implicitly. In his ''Quartetset,'' Sebastian Currie does it head-on, from the very opening. A lilting, antic figure that evokes Classical Vienna is immediately subverted by a questioning violin that thrusts its way out of the music's pat form with a hint of neurosis, as if wondering where it should fit. This sets the tone for a dialogue between the Classical tradition and contemporary music, executed in interesting, idiomatic string quartet writing that is eminently listenable -- no mean feat.
- New York Times
Say it plainly -- Sebastian Currier's "Night Time" for violin and harp ……is one of the best pieces of contemporary classical music to be played in Washington in a long time. Lyrical, colorful, firmly rooted in tradition and yet absolutely new, "Night Time" is set in five short movements, titled "Dusk," "Sleepless," "Vespers," "Nightwind" and "Starlight." It is written so carefully and specifically for the two instruments that one cannot imagine it any other way….. Currier doesn't waste a note in this set of modern nocturnes, and the performance, by violinist Elisabeth Adkins and harpist Susan Robinson, left nothing to be desired in its evocations of rest and restlessness, quietude and mystery.
-Washington Post
Mr. Currier won the Grawemeyer Award for “Static” (2003), and he has already composed “Aftersong” (1994) and “Time Machines (2007) for Ms. Mutter. His smartly constructed variations take a handful of generic pre-smartphone ringtones and turn them into an almost-passacaglia for violin and double bass that plays with harmonic partials and intersperses the ringtones with quick, semiquaver runs...
-New York Times
The nature of Sebastian Currier’s piano music - ebullient, choreographic and wonderfully inventive - announces itself from the first measures of the 1988 Piano Sonata that opens this beguiling disc. The writing is densely packed into the keyboard, but crisp melodic themes and rhythmic interplay register clearly through the busy textures. And the more you listen, the more engrossing the effect becomes. In a series of splendid performances, pianist Laura Melton brings out all the rambunctious finesse of the five-movement sonata and the thoughtful, intricately cross-referenced "Departures and Arrivals." Currier deftly walks a line between dry neo-Classicism and a more explosively messy emotional palette, and Melton traces it well. The disc concludes in a burst of witty high spirits, with "Scarlatti Cadences" - pressing the old master's distinctive formulas into service in new ways - and the hyperactive "Brainstorm."
-San Francisco Chronicle
Currier’s music has been a revelation this year and, hopefully, he will begin to see the larger audience he deserves here in Britain, to join that of his native USA and elsewhere. The pieces performed tonight were a terrific showcase of BBC NOW at its hugely enjoyable, virtuosic best. The opening Microsymph was a model of compressed symphonic form, with a dazzling array of colours, ideas and sounds; not one of which felt ill-judged or extraneous to Currier’s purpose – which impressive feat was repeated in the second half’s Quanta. Whereas Microsymph whirled through a genuine five movement symphony in just ten minutes, complete with spectral waltzes, radiant adagio and bravura fanfares intercut by a ticking clock motif (‘a bit like Leonard Bernstein on speed’ according to one enthralled audience member), Quanta took concision to new heights, as it were, in its succession of epigrammatic fragments inspired by the composer’s travels in China and, specifically, by written Chinese characters. The architecture of this latter piece, too, showed real brilliance as myriad tiny, contrasting fragments, separated by silent pauses, gradually coalesced into a larger form. Both pieces were adroit and witty in a refreshingly unselfconscious way and were, above all, distinguished by a strongly sophisticated sense of harmony that seems all too rare in contemporary music.
-Wales Art Review
The second work, "Nightmaze," had a tighter concept behind it.......Currier's rich and imaginative music sets the right tone, with its fractured and dissonant baroque-like gestures leading off like highway exits into the void and hinting at distant reservoirs of emotion and yearning......
-New York Times
These were performances for connoisseurs. So was the British premiere of Sebastian Currier’s “Aftersong.” If all his pieces are as emotionally charged and ingenious in their use of rethought tonality as this, give me more.
-London Times
The most striking work performed was the newest, a piano sonata … by Sebastian Currier. The sonata's five connected movements are evocations of emotional states; ''Bold and Defiant,'' ''Anxious'' and ''Suppressed'' are among the titles, and Mr. Currier evokes them vividly. His language is expressively dissonant, and often couched in thick quickly changing textures. In the finale, a set of variations in which the passions of the foregoing movements are reprised, the composer's sense of structure and movement is impeccable.
-New York Times