what the critics are saying...
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Newark
Star-Ledger on first performance of
Café Buffé New
York Times review of Harry Partch’s Delusion of the Fury New
Yorker review of Harry Partch’s Oedipus ********************************************************************************************************************************************** "...it
is remarkable how well it worked—in relation to the film and in the "Drummond's Incredible Time (to live and die) was a work of stunning richness that seamlessly integrated flute, zoomoozophone, synthesized brass, percussion and digital drums. It's a piece with legs, guts and wings. Bravo!" Mike Greenberg, San Antonio Sunday Express-News "Incredible Time, conducted by Drummond with a steady beat, contrasted bursts of action with lovely passages for flute, echoed by soft mallet music, that was downright Debussyan. Interesting trading in arpeggios went on between flute, synthesizer and the 'phones and Cassara and Lipsey had bursts of rhythmic phrases together that build to an all-out climax." William Glackin, The Sacramento Bee "...the magic in
this piece was in translating the smell of burning inscence
into some kind of aural equivalent." "Another
outstanding work heard last night was a Dance of the Seven Veils, not
a transcription from Strauss's Salome, but a 1992 composition by Newband co-founder Dean Drummond, whose career is devoted
to the continuation of Partch's music and the
possibilities it creates. Drummond's piece showed him to be an expert
composer. He handled the sonorities available to him with assurance
and, like Partch, arranged his sounds in ways that created
their own coherence." "...and
as the evenings climax, Mr. Drummond's gaudy, thrilling Dance of the Seven
Veils for the full array of Newband
instruments." "The
zoomoozophone is the invention of Mr. Dean
Drummond, a founder of Newband. It is an
enormous vibraphone of sorts with 31 tones per
octave (as opposed to the usual 12) that allows the composer to write
microtonal music. In Weill Hall, the instrument made a tremendous racket,
ricocheting piercing tones off the walls. For Mr. Drummond's Ruby
Half Moon, the zoomoozophone was augmented by a
range of percussion instruments--- "In Mr. Drummond's Columbus, three players are set loose on the zoomoozophone, and its full force filled the ears to capacity and rang powerfully within them." Bernard Holland, New York Times |