EZRA SIMS/press

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E Z R A S I M S

PRESS EXTRACTS

Ezra Sims ... has already contributed an outstanding body of works,

many of which have explored with singular imagination, conviction

-- and success the beautiful but elusive world of microtonal music.

American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award Citation, 1985

CRI 643 [Quintet, Night Piece, solo, flight, Concert Piece]

Ezra Sims is one of the masters of present-day microtonal music, and this disc contains some of his very best music ... every work on this disc is riveting and hypnotic ... no one is doing quite what Sims is doing and collectors of advanced music should have this important disc.

American Record Quide 1/2 1994

Cook

This interesting disc ... despite the perception of microtonal as “difficult” music, the works presented here are quite lyrical ... Recommended

Classical Pulse!

Lee Ranaldo

String Quartet #2 (1962) (1974)

... has simple things to say and says them with great beauty and structural clarity .. of very great beauty.

Boston Globe 13/10/77

Richard Dyer

... this man (unlike a lot of composers) is a musician and hears.

Audio Aug 78

Edward Tantall Canby

Quartet (1982)

...amusing and disquieting, and obviously the work of an original musical intelligence.

Boston Globe 2/2/83

Richard Dyer

...bridging the past and the future in unique clarity, brightness and a whirr of sound.

Westport News 9/11/83

Winifred Keane

Flight

I get to hear a lot of electro-acoustical music. The sultrily rapturous Flight ... strikes me as a choice genre gem.

Fanfare Jan/Feb 94

Mike Silverton

Quintet

... lyrical and quite beautiful lines. The effect is as strange as Planet X and familiar as Debussy.

Fanfare Jan/Feb 94

Mike Silverton

Elegie nach Rilke

The “Elegie” is such a strong piece that it cast the other pieces into the shade... a perfect fitting of words to technique... it was warmly received.

Boston Globe 18/9/76

Richard Buell

... definitely a piece I want to hear again.

Boston Herald American

Ellen Pfeiffer

... the most impressive piece of the night.

New York Times 28/5/77

John Rockwell

Sextet

... the piece is superbly crafted ... despite my ideological misgivings, I found myself captivated and compelled to listen throughout.

Gunther Schuller

Personal communication

I enjoy listening to this record very much, and in fact have spontaneously jumped up ... several times to play it.

Fanfare Jan/Feb 86

Kyle Gann

Come Away

... moves compositionally from apparently simple musical resources to a contrapuntal instrumental coda that weaves together strands of the previous songs like memory might review a life ... skillful combination of words and music.

Fanfare July/Aug 91

William Wians

... a truly pleasurable experience.

Birmingham News 1/3/92

Oliver Roosevelt

Night Piece

... a masterwork of chiaroscuro ....

Fanfare Jan/Feb 94

Mike Silverton

String Quartet

... strong and imaginative ... showed a clear and fresh formal usage.

Musical America Jan 61

Stephen Addis

If I Told Him

... employs musical means that are simple ... which, however, without inessential decoration, become theater.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 19/2/97

Hanno Ehrler

... based on recited texts by ... Gertrude Stein. The microtonal profile of her voice is translated into the notation of the vocal and instrumental parts with a result of high expressivity and beauty of sound.

Darmstadter Echo Feb 1997

Michael Neun

Chamber Cantata on Chinese Poems

... fluent, graceful, and atmospheric.

High Fidelity

A.R.

Third Quartet

... a splendid, highly individual and tightly made string quartet.

New York Times 19/3/65

Theodore Strongin

... hypnotic beauty ... enters the imagination and stretches one’s ears.

The Musical Quarterly

Donald Henahan

An object lesson in the balance between generous melodic invention and its harmonic setting, excellently shown in the dialogue-like structures.

Salzburger Nachrichten May 93

... a fascinating and original work ... a piece with survival value.

San Francisco Chronicle 6/69

Hewell Tircuit

... one of the most fascinatingly unfashionable modern works to come my way in years ... A really individual piece, and one not to be missed.

High Fidelity, 1965

Solo in Four Movements

... elegant and meditative

Classical Pulse! Dec. 93

Lee Ranaldo

... a convincingly Bachian warmth and power

N.Y.Times 24/5/88

Allan Kozinn

Concert Piece

... densities that play as a joy: a relatively large instrumental force put to as singular a usage as this weaves a novel sonic tapestry.

Fanfare Jan/Feb 94

Mike Silverton

Subversive music indeed! It kept going in one’s mind well into Brahms’ Serenade (op. 16) and commenting as to how arbitrarily and conventionally it was tuned

The Boston Globe 1/3/92

Richard Buell

Celebration of Dead Ladies

... caused the scales to fall from this reviewer’s eyes ... charming in its dense, swarming way ... sheets of sound swirling about .. radiated conviction and originality you couldn’t miss.

The Boston Globe

Richard Buell

Ezra Sims, an honest-to-God New England original ...

Village Voice 7 March 1989