Other Reviews of LIve Performances:
by rw
juggernauts of driving, violently syncopated rhythm...Modern Primitive" is treme
Reviewer: Tom Strini/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (click for website)
"Modern Primitive" (1991) is a latter-day "Rite of Spring." The outer sections are juggernauts of driving, violently syncopated rhythm sandwiched around a stunned, floating middle section that dotes on a monotonous, childlike tunelet. "Modern Primitive" is tremendously exciting, and not only for its speed. You're not only rolling in this piece, you're careening -- nothing in the fast sections repeats literally, and the rhythms are just nasty. Congratulations to clarinetist Dan Paprocki, violinist Eric Segnitz, percussionist Terry Smirl, flutist Marie Sander, cellist Karl Lavine, pianist Phillip Bush and conductor Kevin Stalheim for concealing the counting and hacking away as if they were natives playing their crazed folk music.
This achingly exquisite work...highlighted another outstanding concert by PNME
Reviewer: Andrew Druckenbrod/Pittsburgh Post Gazette (click for website)
Music Review: New music that's theatrical, colorful and singing Monday, July 18, 2005 By Andrew Druckenbrod, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette At first blush, listeners might have thought Randy Woolf's "Everything Is Green" to be a nod to the lime "team" colors of the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble. Turns out, the composition may be a standard bearer of its own, for an intriguing niche of the art song genre. This achingly exquisite work for flute, piano and tape highlighted another outstanding concert by PNME Friday at City Theatre. To consider "Everything Is Green" as song is a bit of a stretch. For one, there was no singer. A pre-recorded narrator, Rinde Eckert, related a short story by David Foster Wallace over the playing of flutist Lindsey Goodman and pianist Daniel Spiegel. But it felt like song and engaged with the same power. The story, set in a trailer park, is elegiac. A world-weary middle-aged man confronts his cheating girlfriend. Rather than yelling at her, he desperately tries to explain to this younger and less complex companion what his deeper, spiritual needs are these days. Woolf captured the blend of hopelessness and passion the protagonist feels. The piano assumed the role of the singer with a pensive melody while the flute portrayed the man's ranging emotions. A sampled pedal steel guitar lent the strains of country music. The girlfriend is embodied by an intrusively synthetic, Laurie Anderson-like sample. This punctuates her lack of depth. But, in a score roughly in G major, her line slips into E minor at the end, showing that she, too, felt depression. The crux of the work finds the man deciding to ignore her shortcomings and stay, a choice echoed with the flute emphatically playing a high G. Goodman performed the difficult part with agility and emotion.
astonishing musical textures far greater than the sum of their part
Reviewer: Jason Freeman/Computer-Music-Journal (click for website)
Randall Woolf’s Hee Haw integrates looped samples of square-dance callers (triggered by keyboard players) with a chamber ensemble and two singers to create astonishing musical textures far greater than the sum of their parts.
