Contemporary Music Review (Excerpt)
Controlled Extroversion
November 8, 2005
By Jules Langert
Strata, the brilliant instrumental trio of violin, clarinet, and piano which has made several appearances with Composers, Inc. over the years, was in the Green Room again on Tuesday, this time with a full recital of magnificently played music, some of it composed expressly for this ensemble. Though the program may have contained an overabundance of extroverted, flamboyant music, it hardly seemed to bother Composers Inc.’s audience, who leapt to their feet at the end of the concert in an exuberant standing ovation.
One of the musical highlights, Maryland composer Robert Gibson's Twelve Poems, was an evocative set of short character pieces, by turns moody, colorful, and dynamic, as performed by its dedicatees, violinist James Stern and pianist Audrey Andrist. In each piece Gibson was able to translate a descriptive title into an appropriate sound image, from which the musical shape could evolve. In Wind Chimes it was sliding string harmonics against bell–tones for the piano that made the connection. Reflection was opaque and contemplative, in the form of a palindrome. Waves emulated the patterns of growth and decay that we associate with sound waves, and Cloudburst combined intricately chromatic runs for the violin with short, percussive tone clusters in the piano. With Hommage the music took a detour into a quasi–Debussyan soundscape. Quatrain and Octave, the last two pieces, used their respective intervals prominently, ending the work with a rush and a clarion flourish.
from San Francisco Classical Voice (sfcv.org)