Many thanks to Fanfare Magazine for reviewing “Moxie“ by the Chamber Winds of South Dakota!

This article originally appeared in Issue 49:3 (Jan/Feb 2026) of Fanfare Magazine.

Moxie is the debut release for the newly formed Chamber Winds of South Dakota. The ensemble is comprised of talented musicians, professors, conductors, producers, and arts administrators. It seems to be a Who’s Who ensemble for many high-achieving wind players from throughout the Midwest with a strong focus on South Dakota. The ensemble consists of Elizabeth Robinson and Stephanie Kocher on flute; Jennifer Wohlenhaus Bloomberg and Robin Michelle Sweeden on oboe; Michael Walsh and Beverly Gibson on clarinet; James Compton and Martin J. Van Klompenberg on bassoon; Sam Gowen and Amy Laursen on horn; and Mark Stevens on piano.

I wish that there were more chamber wind groups that performed this type of repertoire around the U.S. I often feel that we are limited as musicians to either having to gravitate to playing in smaller chamber groups like a quartet, trio, or duo or are pushed toward the larger ensembles like the full-orchestra setting. In most areas of the U.S., universities are one of the primary places where this type of chamber music receives regular attention. Having more ensembles that encompass players from multiple institutions can help keep the art form strong and communities collaborating.

I appreciate the ensemble creating a link through the theme even if each piece wasn’t dedicated to the exact same topic. My favorite piece included is Jonathan Newman’s Concertino for Flute Solo, Chamber Winds, and Piano. Personally, I always gravitate to Newman’s works as they never disappoint.

The recording was completed and produced by founder Meerenai Shim with her studio Aerocade Music. Shim has a deep personal understanding of how to record for winds unique to someone who has played a wind instrument for much of her life. The balance and clarity are stellar from beginning to end. I look forward to hearing the next release from the Chamber Winds of South Dakota. Natalie Szabo

This article originally appeared in Issue 49:3 (Jan/Feb 2026) of Fanfare Magazine.

Flutist Meerenai Shim’s new album is a dazzling, cutting-edge recital which is riveting from first to last. Actually “flutist” doesn’t convey the half of what Shim does here. She plays piccolo, flute, alto flute, bass flute, contrabass flute, piano, drums, cello, Otamatone (we’ll get to that), and provides vocals. She’s curated the recital to perfection and acted as producer for the album. Phew. All that effort pays off handsomely, though.

Shim starts with a contemporary classic, Steve Reich’s Vermont Counterpoint. This is a fast, hectic whirlwind of a piece. Its compositional technique is predicated on the construction of canons between short repeating melodic patterns, substituting notes for rests, and creating new melodies from their combination. It’s scored for three alto flutes, three flutes, three piccolos, and one solo part all pre-recorded, plus a live solo part. Shim, multi-tracked, plays all the instruments with exhilarating virtuosity and one is instantly aware of the care that has been taken with the canvas of sound.

Janice Misurell-Mitchell’s O Sapientia, which follows, uses the antiphon of that name by the medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen as a starting point for what feels like a journey through an evolving soundscape, from something truly ancient at the start to a much more jagged and fragmented present. Shim’s flutes at the start evoke organ chords, and the talented countertenor Carl Alexander’s vocals are reminiscent of plainchant. Multi-tracking is cleverly used as the piece evolves so that the range of sounds becomes more complex and mysterious, until we seem far from its origins at the conclusion. It’s a transportive and immersive experience.

Three pieces by Meghann Wilhoite come next. The composer explains that they originated as an EP for an electronic music project. When Shim made contact about Wilhoite writing a new piece for her, Wilhoite suggested that she “cover” the EP. The result is extraordinary. Shim plays cello and drums as well as flutes on As if, a thrilling and relentless exploration of the combative. She adds piano to flutes on You Don’t Belong Here, a more austere and reflective piece which closes beautifully with a flute choir. The Audacity, the final piece in the group, has its roots in rock with Shim playing a simple flute part over a distinctive beat. An Otamatone (a miniature synthesizer shaped like an eighth note) also makes a surprising but subtle appearance. I very much enjoyed this unpretentious two and a half minutes of music whose cumulative effect defies conventional analysis.

Brent Miller’s Miniatures, Book 4: Preset Etudes is a playful juxtaposition of some flute writing redolent of the technical exercise or etude and a Korg drum machine, played out over six short sections. I found it joyfully eccentric (among Shim’s duties as a performer is a reading of the Korg manual) and utterly fascinating.

The album closes with The Honorable Elizabeth A. Baker’s Whispers on the Wind. Baker says the piece, the longest on the album, “explores the liminal space where wishes of the heart are made and answers to questions, that one never speaks aloud, are softly carried on streams of air.” That liminal quality is powerfully evoked by the astounding range of sounds and textures contained in the work’s 22-minute duration. In some ways what we hear is a reminder of what has gone before on the album, excitingly developed. So multi-tracking and the spoken word feature again, together with an extended palette of electronic sounds, to which Shim adds a Glissando Headjoint for her flute to extraordinary effect. The performer uses a video score, which I would have loved to have seen. Its “Codex” gives some examples, which actually help to imagine not just the score but also its effect: “Big circles, low pitch, deep pitches in the lower range”; “Text is read into the flute breathy and hanging on sibilance”; “Chaos dots are a mixture of sounds of any choice, with separation at the atomic level they build in the electronics as a wall of sound.” You have to commit to this piece as a listener. If you do, it opens up and rewards.

The Audacity is a wonderful showcase, then, both for contemporary composition and for a very special performer. Shim has done an excellent job too as producer. The album is not “about” the technology it uses, but Shim’s vision for its potential has clearly been liberating. The result is deeply memorable. Dominic Hartley

This article originally appeared in Issue 49:3 (Jan/Feb 2026) of Fanfare Magazine.

It’s too bad (to say the least) that we are at a point in American history at which this CD needed to be made as a reminder of what we could lose and what we already are losing. On the CD itself, coloratura soprano Chelsea Hollow is pictured with the words “This Machine Kills Fascists” written on her throat, the same words that Woody Guthrie painted on his guitars in the 1940s. The point is this: our government is trying to limit the rights of human beings because of their origin, their beliefs, their religion, their gender and sexual identities, and their attitudes about what is right and what is wrong. Cycles of Resistance is a collection of nine songs or song cycles that sing out against such oppression, and that celebrate the heroes and the survivors alike.

It is refreshing to hear classical music (or close enough) that also could be described as protest music, as that genre usually is associated with folk music. (Again, see Woody Guthrie.) Protest music doesn’t have a particular sound, though—at least not here. The music on this CD falls into a number of different styles, from homey lyricism (several of the works) and operatic drama (ditto) to pitched declamation over popular dance beats (AOC Takes the Floor) and music aligned with Glassian minimalism (The Beauty of Disability). I’m not prepared to say that all of it is good—some of it is a little self-important, and some of it is like sitting through a college classroom talk-in—but, as I suggested at the beginning, its being good seems less important than getting the word out in every way one can about how something is rotten in our American state of Denmark. I guess time will tell whether a work is good or not. For now, one could say that each work has a job to do, and each work gets that job done.

To give you an example of what is on this CD, take the opening cycle, with music by Niloufar Nourbakhsh and texts by Valarie Kaur. The first movement of The Darkness of the Womb is a sung narration of how Kaur’s Sikh grandfather was imprisoned for months upon his arrival in the United States because of his foreign appearance. Upon his release, he became a farmer and looked after the farms of his Japanese-American neighbors during their own detention in World War II. In the second movement, Kaur describes how she became a lawyer after 9/11 in response to the murder of her uncle and to the sentiment that blazed up against those perceived as “other.” “And then my son was born” are the words that open the third movement, in which Kaur muses on how her son, “a brown boy,” is being given a world more dangerous to live in than the one she was given. In the fourth movement, she speaks out against the rise of white nationalism and the rage that it has engendered. The cycle ends with hope, however, as Kaur asks herself if this darkness is the darkness of the womb, not of the tomb—is a new America waiting to be born? It closes with the words, “Tomorrow we will labor in love through love and your revolutionary love is the magic we will show our children.” Nourbakhsh’s music is an effective setting for Kaur’s words, simple and songlike when referring to her family, anguished when describing oppression and violence. Hollow is taken to the upper limits of her vocal range, leaving no doubts about the intensity of Kaur’s words and feelings. Several other works on this CD challenge how far Hollow’s voice can go, but her instrument is powerful and unconstrained.

All of the music on this CD, by the way, was commissioned by Hollow, so her commitment to this project is by no means casual or situational. Many of the works are accompanied by pianist Taylor Chan, an excellent musician who is active in the new-music scene. Others are accompanied by (or Hollow’s voice is modified by) electronics such as vocoder, looper pedal, modular synthesizer, and fixed media.

Cycles of Resistance is not easy listening, in the sense that it forces the listener to confront unpleasant truths about the state of our state. The music and the texts do not seek to entertain, but to educate, raise awareness, and inspire. As I mentioned at the beginning, one wishes that it were no longer necessary, such as in the America that Valarie Kaur dreams of, to write and perform such music, but as long as it is, it is good to have artists as strong and full of integrity as Chelsea Hollow, and also the composers and writers represented on this CD, who are able to do it. Raymond Tuttle

Many thanks to Take Effect for reviewing “Moxie” by the Chamber Winds of South Dakota!

A highly eloquent affair that thematically surrounds the landscape of Utah, the aftermath of Trayvon Martin’s death, and hardship of musicians following Covid, every selection here is flawlessly executed and appreciated.

Read the rest!

“This disc presents music that is clever, delightful, and sometimes thought-provoking, all in excellent performances. Not just for flutists.”

— Colin Clarke, Fanfare Magazine

This article originally appeared in Issue 49:3 (Jan/Feb 2026) of Fanfare Magazine.

Mostly bird-themed works provide the material for this delightful celebration of things avian via the medium of flute(s) and piccolo.

The disc begins with Gay Kahkonen’s Missouri Adventure for four flutes, the opening “Forest and Sky” seeming to owe a debt to Copland’s famous Fanfare. The second movement, “The River is Wide,” is full of crosscurrents, as it were, between flutes, with the cheekiest of closes. Energy pervades “Missouri Adventure” with a sense of abandon that seems to invoke childhood shapes. Listen carefully, though, and one hears spot-on ensemble. The players have managed to combine this with a palpable sense of vitality in the recording studio: no mean feat. This piece was commissioned as a celebration of Missouri’s statehood bicentennial; the inspiration is that state’s many national parks.

Ensemble trills, so neat and buzzing here, launch Kimberly R. Osberg’s Fowl Play. The first movement has the intriguing tile “Discopeckque.” The music of the whole piece explores exotic chickens (who knew?), four types, one per movement, each capturing the specific type of chicken’s characteristics. “Discopeckque” is expertly written, its complexities minimized through expert performance here to reveal a piece that just puts a smile on one’s face. “Chasing Tail” is more circumspect (or is that “Cicums-peck-t”?), with a nicely varied timbal surface (no missing the “whistling” piccolo). “Featherbrained” is almost a chorale for flutes with a hint of an American folk song about it. Nicely lyrical, this is a most enjoyable 2.5 minutes (including some interesting, gentle, chicken-y effects). “Cock Flight” is a varied finale and is certainly not throw-away. Again the flutists negotiate the territory with expertise. It is with a piece by Osberg that the disc ends, Hoppy Feet for solo flute, a delightful portrait of the Rockhopper penguin, described in the notes as “the world’s smallest—and arguably, most ridiculous—penguin” which is “known as much for its unusual antics as its distinctive plumage.” Osberg honors both the unusual elements but also accords the penguin respect by not overly making fun of it. Effects are done with pomp and ease by Robinson.

I do think more space between tracks would be good: “Cock Flight” goes pretty much straight into Nicole Chamberlain’s Death Whistle. Interestingly, works by Osberg and Chamberlain also featured on the Merian Ensemble’s Navona release Book of Spells (which I reviewed in Fanfare 48:2). Here, we have Chamberlain’s Death Whistle for solo piccolo (Elizabeth Robinson getting a chance to shine alone). Written for the present performer, it is apparently full of inside jokes. Even without being privy to these, it works, full of clever effects in “Ear Knife” before the slower “Ballistophobia” pits blowed notes with more percussive effects. The final “#PiccolOhMyGod” continues the effects but in a more frenzied, yet somehow cheeky fashion. The other Chamberlain piece occurs toward the end of the disc: the flighty Spooklight, which celebrates an urban legend from Joplin, Missouri. It “flirts with the supernatural” according to the notes. It’s basically Halloween fun, and all the better for it. It is also expertly written and perfectly delivered here.

That sudden move from track to track does mean that the sudden arrival of a couple of flutes for Lisa Bost-Sandberg’s Starling after the solo piccolo Death Whistle is a bit sudden. Slowly additive chords change color intriguingly: this is expert writing. The piece celebrates “the beautiful murmurations flocks create.” At just a touch over seven minutes, this is the disc’s space for reflection. There appears to be a bass flute in the equation, nice and throaty.

Ann McKennon’s Flamingo! paints a ground-based ballet of flamingoes with great wit, again for flute ensemble. Another expert, light touch at work from the composer here, and the influence of ballet (Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker to the fore, it seems) is clear.

This disc presents music that is clever, delightful, and sometimes thought-provoking, all in excellent performances. Not just for flutists. Colin Clarke

Textura Reviews “Aviary” by Elizabeth Robinson

One imagines Takemitsu would be captivated by Aviary, and were he still with us Messiaen would no doubt have the collection on repeat too. Credit Robinson for crafting an album filled with one delightful moment after another, but credit also her flute-playing partners for helping to generate its harmonic sound world and the composers for giving them wonderful material to perform. For flute lovers especially, the album's a must-have, but its appeal is hardly exclusive to a single group.

Read the rest of the thoughtful review on Textura.org!

Aviary is reviewed in the current issue of The Flutist Quarterly:

“Robinson is joined by Emlyn Johnson, Carmen A. Lemoine, Erin K. Murphy, and Nicole Riner for the ensemble tracks, and the group’s playing is magnificent, with gorgeous blend, impeccable intonation, and complementary vibrato between the players. They seem to be uniformly comfortable with the many extended techniques required, and their sensitive and enthusiastic interpretation brings this music to life in a satisfying, exciting way. Particularly notable is Robinson’s piccolo playing, which is lively and virtuosic with a flexible delicacy. The low flutes in the “Featherbrained” movement of Osberg’s Fowl Play” have no trouble taking the spotlight with their melodies, building a rich, harmonic sound world that is even more exciting in the section of pizzicato tonguing about halfway through the movement.

Aviary is worth a listen, and these composers and performers are definitely worth watching.”

- Jessica Dunnavant, The Flutist Quarterly

Thank you Jessica Dunnavant and The Flutist Quarterly! If you’re a member of the National Flute Association, read the rest of the review here.

Listen to the album here.

Thank you to George Grella (Kill Yr Idols) and Tone Madison for including Oneira on your “Best of” lists for 2022!

Check out their lists:
Kill Yr Idols: Best Classical Recordings 2022
Tone Madison: Tone Madison’s top 20 records of 2022

Thank you textura for reviewing “Oneira” by Clocks in Motion!

“While it's possible to detect traces of Classical Minimalism and Balinese Gamelan in the material, [Bellor] possesses a natural gift for eluding reductive categorization. Stated otherwise, her writing is more identified by an expressive personal signature than allegiance to a particular genre or tradition. Without restricting itself necessarily, the music eschews dissonance for a vibrant, harmonious sound that dovetails excellently with the quartet's vibrant playing.”

Read the rest of the review at textura.

Listen to Oneira.

This article originally appeared in Issue 43:2 (Nov/Dec 2019) of Fanfare Magazine.

Because Patterns • Isaac Schankler • Aerocade 011 (42:11)

Sometimes, not often, a sound just gets you. There is an immediate resonance that impels further listening. Such was the case with the opening of Isaac Schankler’s Because Patterns/Deep State. While the idea of using a prepared piano carries inevitable echoes of John Cage, and indeed there are certain passages that may reference Sonatas and Interludes, Schankler’s world is unique. It’s good to see Aron Kallay there, too, as he pretty much blew Fanfare reviewer Robert Carl’s mind with his disc Beyond Twelve (which included a piece by Schankler that reimagined a Chopin étude, entitled Alien Warp Étude). Schankler’s piece Pheromone was reviewed by myself in Fanfare 40:2. 

The idea of this disc is to explore three ways in three pieces of manipulating patterns. Because Patterns carries with it resonances of Feldman’s Why Patterns. This is rule-generated music in which a system of parameters used on one measure generates the next, a process referred to as cellular automaton. Here, it is mixed with a performance of Deep State for double bass and electronics. Whereas the upper frequencies move swiftly, with clear Minimalist tendencies, the lower stratum seems to reference an eternal. Because Patterns was commissioned by the present performers, the Ray-Kallay duo. The best electronic music shared with the best Minimalist music a sort of emotional cleanliness, and that is precisely what we get here. Even the ruminative, deep moments (both in pitch area and emotional intent) and the ruminative ones pitched high on the spectrum exhibit that cleanliness. In a sense, this changes the way we listen: Instead of a straightforward beauty experienced from music, there is an element here of beauty examined like an object held out at an arm’s reach and then beauty experienced. 

Cellular automaton is a process that, while simple on paper, can generate highly complex results in a number of areas of which music is only one. Although the idea was developed in the 1940s, it was in the 1970s that the idea was brought to popular science via Cambridge mathematician John Horton Conway’s book The Game of Life. Although a seemingly dry mathematical construct, the concept of cellular automaton can be found in nature in sea shells; and a reflection of that beauty is, perhaps, its appearance in music here. 

The performance is wonderful: clean-cut, perfectly calibrated both rhythmically and in the cut-crystal recording. Let that not imply there is no subtlety; the quiet re-emergence of the piano from an atemporal electronic hum later in the piece is beautifully managed. Out of the final droplets of sound emerges a throaty violin note. The piece Mobile I has the electronics reacting to violinist Sakura Tsai’s playing; an ongoing spectral analysis that initially is hardly even felt, only whispered, but becomes more insistent as the piece progresses. The composer, in the liner notes, acknowledges Tsai’s mastery, “improvised and polished at the same time.” 

On a different plane, at least on an immediate level, is Future Feelings for piano, played with real understanding by Nadia Shpachenko. The piece was written at the time of the birth of the composer’s first child, and Schankler wanted to create “a quiet, soothing version of noise music.” So the first part of the piece is actually built around a decidedly Romantic sound world, exuding a sense of nostalgia only underlined by the musical bedfellows on this disc. There is a sense at one point that any rose-tinted spectacles come off in an acknowledgement that a return to that past is impossible. 

Unique and thought-provoking, Schankler’s voice needs to be heard. Often restful and thoughtful and yet often subtly disturbing in its way of destabilizing fields of calm, this music offers myriad ways to reflect on the nature of how one expresses oneself via the medium of sound. And all that in just over 40 minutes. 

Colin Clarke

This article originally appeared in Issue 43:2 (Nov/Dec 2019) of Fanfare Magazine.

Donut Robot! • Post-Haste Reed Duo • AEROCADE 010 (59:30)

Yes, you read that right: Donut Robot!: a celebration of the combination of saxophone and bassoon. The title comes from Ruby Fulton’s charming piece, which for just shy of 10 minutes explores a somewhat unsurprisingly mechanistic soundworld. The title comes from that scourge of contemporary life, autocorrect, in a text message between the two members of the Post-Haste Duo. A musical representation of the state before and after communication breakdown (unison passages cede to all sorts of fun), it has a more serious side as it examines also some of the dark side of such breakdowns (Pokemon Go! causing accidents and deaths, Y2K, and so on). It is the ideal ushering-in of this new sound universe of sax and bassoon, and the cartoon illustrations on the disc of a metal donut with pink icing and hundreds and thousands of sprinkles are amazing. The performance needs to be preternaturally accurate for this to work, and so it is. 

The keening, microtonal high opening of Drew Baker’s First Light and its continuing exploration of that soundspace are an intended depiction of the time between dawn and sunrise. The idea is to live within the texture and at the same time observe its changes, however small they may be. The three Soundscapes of Michael Johanson are inspired by two vistas: the hills of southern Italy and snowfall in Oregon. There is a spring in the step of the first, “The Hills of Basilicata,” an artist community the composer visited in 2014. There is much beauty here, enhanced by the perfect ensemble of the two players (at times they sound as if they are two stops on an organ, perfectly articulated by the organist). The central “Snowscape” is a musical depiction of the peace after a snowfall the composer witnessed in Oregon, while the joyous, multi-meter “Moto perpetuo” does what it says on the tin, and well. 

Another great title is for Edward J. Hines’s piece Hommage: Saygun et Bartók en Turque, subtitled “Chanson de Hatice Dekioğlu.” The piece refers to the visit in 1936 by the two composers Bartók and Saygun to a Turkish village, where the 13-year-old Hatice Dekioğlu sang a folksong for them. The two players at one point intone the words of the song “I came to this World from Istanbul / My affection is for the daughter of the Armenian / Don’t eat, don’t drink, but look at the eyes of the young one / Take me to the saddle, oh son of the Kurd, and let us go.” Hines’s piece is a set of variations on the original recording, but it is also a tribute to the two composers—especially Saygun, perhaps, as Hines studied composition and ethnomusicology with him on a Fulbright scholarship in the mid-1980s. Towards the end, we hear the original recording above sustained notes on sax and bassoon; the instruments react to the sound, too. It is an unbearably touching moment when one is aware of the basis of the piece. 

The inspiration for Andrea Reinkemeyer’s In the Speaking Silence comes from a poem by Cristina Rossetti, Echo. Written in 2018 in memory of the composer’s mother, there is an inevitable touching aspect to this piece of sonic mourning. There is a rhythmic underlay derived from the Christian hymn It is Well with my Soul in tribute to the deceased’s love of the hymnic tradition. There is the most remarkable multiphonic on saxophone here—remarkable for both its veracity (multiphonics so often misfire and sound like something grinding when it shouldn’t be) and its perfect control. In performance, the performers should be located as far away from each other as possible, to enhance the echo effects; space in musical terms is also utilized, as the players begin in unison and end far apart. 

That would have been a poignant way to end, but one in dissonance, perhaps, with the pink-frosted metal donut, so the closing word is left to Takumah Itoh’s Snapshots, which comprises four short movements: “Grotesque,” “Chain,” “Haunted,” and “Early Bird Special.” Fragmented Minimalism makes “Chain” particularly fascinating, especially after the harsh sounds of the short “Grotesque.” The title “Chain” refers to Lutosławski’s series of works of that name, and controlled aleatorism is the link between the two. Itoh concentrates on the glissando for “Haunted,” but his way is far from straightforward or hackneyed. It is, moreover, a study on where how and where the directionalism of a glissando flowers. It morphs into “Early Bird Special,” bebop influenced (think of Charlie Parker’s “Bird”) and also reminiscent of Raymond Scott’s mechanistic, cartoonish music. 

Detailed notes on the music is available online. Intriguing and strangely satisfying from first to last, this is a most unexpected treat. 

Colin Clarke 

Photo: Charlotte Suarez

This article originally appeared in Issue 43:2 (Nov/Dec 2019) of Fanfare Magazine.

Quadrivium • Elizabeth A. Baker • AEROCADE 008 (118:00)

Elizabeth A. Baker, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, refers to herself as a “New Renaissance Artist,” which means in part that she works in a variety of forms and media. A 16-page zine accompanying this release includes her poetry and art, and it helps to put her work in a broad perspective. It also includes a “Manifesto” in which Baker decries exclusivity in the presentation and dissemination of modern concert music (and art in general), and in which she observes that such exclusivity can be created unintentionally by well-meaning promoters who try to attract new audiences with “trendy” or “curated” experiences. This resonates with me, and not just because “curated” has lately become my least favorite buzzword! “Art,” she writes, “belongs to all mankind.” Right on. 

Baker, who is now 29, is a graduate of St. Petersburg College’s Music Industry Recording Arts program; she started out as a classical guitarist before discovering her true creative voice, in which the piano plays a central role. Quadrivium is the latest of several commercial releases (available, like Quadrivium, on Bandcamp), and the most varied yet in both instrumentation and style. An early, all-piano collection is called Imperfect Improvisations for Possible Probable Ghost Listeners, and some of the music on that release sounds eerily like Debussy, or like Scriabin on Quaaludes. Quadrivium is nothing like that. Its first half, while devoted to the piano, opens with the Minimalist and tightly controlled Sashay by Nathan Anthony Corder, and continues with Baker’s own works, looser and more improvisational in style, which call for the piano to be prepared in different ways. The title Command Voices, used in two of these works, alludes to the voices heard by individuals experiencing psychosis. These voices direct them to behave in certain ways, including in ways that can cause harm to the individual or to the community. One of the implements used in these works is a vibrator—yes, that kind of vibrator. (The feminist implications of that are fascinating.) The second half is devoted to works in which electronics and spoken word feed off each other, and here Quadrivium takes on an appealingly science-fictionish vibe—a little William Gibson and a little Samuel Delany. Baker addresses social issues, such as the transactional nature of love in the digital age, and the alienation of the “silent webcrawler,” sometimes electronically altering her voice to emphasize that alienation. A recitation of URLs and IP addresses, punctuated by a slow and stuttering electronic heartbeat, is chilling. Baker is a talented composer and performer, and Quadrivium, taken as a whole, is a pretty impressive release for someone still so young. Perhaps Baker will be the Pauline Oliveros of her generation, and perhaps she will be more than that. 

Quadrivium also is available as a digital download from Bandcamp, where you can buy the CD, and a separate copy of the zine, if you so desire. It’s not easy listening in any sense of that phrase, but its difficulties are anything but gratuitous. Adventurous listeners might find it to be a provocative and intriguing ride. 

Raymond Tuttle 

Many thanks to textura for reviewing Isaac Schankler’s Because Patterns!

“Benefits accrue to composer and performer alike from this presentation of three electroacoustic works by Los Angeles-based Isaac Schankler. Currently Assistant Professor of Music at Cal Poly Pomona, Schankler is a composer, accordionist, and electronic musician whose material is realized exquisitely on the forty-two-minute recording by pianists Aron Kallay and Vicki Ray, double bassist Scott Worthington, violinist Sakura Tsai, and pianist Nadia Shpachenko. The Ray-Kallay Duo appears alongside Worthington on Because Patterns/Deep State, whereas Tsai and Shpachenko present solo performances of Mobile I and Future Feelings, respectively. Describing them as such isn't perhaps entirely accurate, however, when the pieces seem more like collaborations between the performers and electronics. Regardless, the material benefits mightily from the high-level artistry of the musicians, and one's impression of Schankler's composing ability is enhanced in turn by their performances. All five players bring impressive credentials to the project: Shpachenko, for example, is, like Schankler, a Professor of Music at Cal Poly Pomona University, whereas Ray is head of keyboard studies at the California Institute of the Arts.”

Read the rest at textura.org.

The Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review says:

“No person is an island and perhaps every piece of music connects in some way to every other piece of music whether local or world-widely, contemporary to ancient. That may be more to chew off on this rainy morning than I can safely address on the blog, but it explains my feeling listening to Because Patterns (Aerocade Music 011). I get a distinct window on experiencing a piece of today that is electroacoustically enmeshed with what has happened in Electronica and the Post-Progressive in Rock, on one hand, soundscaping ambiance, and the whole spectrum of the Modern Contemporary Classical on the other.”

Read the rest of the review here.

Thank you Grego Applegate Edwards for taking the time to listen to and review Because Patterns!

Many thanks to I Care if You Listen and Nick Stevens for taking the time to review Isaac Schankler’s Because Patterns!

“Because Patterns has it all: killer liner notes, evocative performances from musical dream teams, and balance between coherence and variety. The impeccable recording, engineering, and mixing by Schankler, Vanessa Parr, Ben Phelps, Scott Fraser, Barry Werger, and others certainly help. Four years and eleven records into its existence, Aerocade Music can claim another victory with this release.”

- Nick Stevens, I Care if You Listen

Read the entire review here.

Thank you Paul Muller and Sequenza 21 for reviewing Isaac Schankler’s Because Patterns!

“The entire album is remarkable listening and represents a new benchmark of just how highly evolved the combination of acoustic instruments and electronics have become in the service of musical expression.”

- Paul Muller, Sequenza 21

Read the entire review here.

“Anyone doubtful as to the range of creative possibilities a bassoon-and-saxophone duo might offer should come away from Donut Robot! convinced otherwise. Its virtuosic performances by Fredenburg and Rodriguez show the combination to have as unlimited a potential as a violin-and-piano coupling, the significant difference between them the size of the repertoires associated with the pairings. As this recording shows, Post-Haste Reed Duo is doing its part to make that difference smaller.” - textura, April 2019

Read the whole review here.

Thank you Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review for recommending Donut Robot!

“There are album concepts and cover illustrations that grab my attention and I will admit that the art on Donut Robot! (Aerocade Music 010) by the Post-Haste Reed Duo is a favorite.What's wrong with a bit of outlandish humor? Nothing at all as far as I am concerned. All the better of course if the music turns out to be very much worth our ear-time. That is the case here as limber-timbred saxophonist Sean Fredenburg and bassoon stalwart Javier Rodriguez take us on an imaginative journey through six compositions and compositional suites.”

Read the rest of the review on the Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review site.