MORE DETAILS ON UPCOMING RECITAL
World premieres of settings of poems by novelist/poet Alexander Theroux for soprano & piano…
Settings of poems by novelist, poet, essayist Alexander Theroux for soprano & piano will be performed by soprano Hsin Yi Lin and pianist Asya Gulua, all of which are world premieres. Three piano works, one of which is a “live" world premiere (the piece, “Golden Gate Rag" was already recorded on YouTube several months ago) will be performed by pianist Myrna Setiawan, and another solo piano work, “Tabloid" (not heard in almost thirty years), will be performed by my wife Kaori Katayama Noland. I will be performing a new work for improvised piano & electronics titled “James Webb Space Telescope Photo Montage." I look forward to seeing many of you there!
Please take note of the Parental Advisory my conscience compels me to include as a caveat due to a single strong one-syllable word employed in one of the poems by Alexander Theroux set for soprano and piano. Rest assured, no other word in the English language (a word that composer/diarist Ned Rorem advises all writers to use sparingly for maximal effect) could have been used to express the sentiment conveyed in the poem at issue. Its employment is for naught but strictly artistic/expressive purposes. That said, please don’t fail to bear in mind H.L. Mencken’s famous definition of “puritanism,” namely: “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy!"
—Gary Lloyd Noland
“Gloriously Innovative…!”—TUNEDLOUD!
“...florid and juicy...”—RICHARD BUELL, THE BOSTON GLOBE
“…the audacity of Noland’s artistry – he challenges the musical establishment with a brazen “why not?” and presents us with a musical dialectic of sorts, where atonal and avant-garde are counterposed with tonality, harmony and conventional beauty. Drawing influence from neo-romanticist and experimental traditions, he is neither beholden to lineage nor indifferent to it. He is, rather, a multi-linguist whose fluency is apparent as he moves playfully across boundaries, a time-and-space traveller whose allegiance, if any, is to the journey itself.”—BETSY MACDONALD
"Leopold Berg meets Karol Godowsky and Alban Szymanowski - but more than just that.…"—ALISTAIR HINTON, Scottish composer and musicologist; curator of the Sorabji Archive.
“…highly mesmerizing and playful music-theatre-like-collage-music…”—LUKAS HUISMAN, Belgian pianist
“...iconoclastic, stylistic potpourri standards of giddy humor, no holds barred soup to nuts and high spirits.”—ROBERT LEVIN, pianist, musicologist, composer
“Mr. Noland writes as a ‘time traveler’ in styles long abandoned by most composers as well as styles so new as to not have been imagined but by him. This he accomplishes naturally, convincingly, with originality and true passion. His command of all musical languages and his ability to traverse musical time is nothing less than remarkable. Listen!”—DONALD MARTINO, Pulitzer Prize winning composer
“...set in a dizzying harmonic language that loops uncontrollably through a wide-ranging gamut of possible and impossible tonalities ... The general effect is like watching wet paintings of 19th Century musical memorabilia drip into frazzled 21st Century oblivion...”—ALLEN GIMBEL, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
“Gary Noland is one of the great composers of the 21st century.”—JACK RUMMEL, KGNU 88.5 FM, Boulder CO
"...yum yum, like acid candies for children that fizz in the mouth."—ERIC BOULENGER
“Composer Gary Noland is possessed of a rich musical imagination, whose technique distills the achievements of Reger, Strauss and Schoenberg but also refracts their post-romantic/expressionist tendencies through the lens of twenty-first century post- modernism, American style. Moreover, he fits Stravinsky’s definition of a great composer: one who doesn’t merely steal, but knows what to steal. This Noland does with a wit and aplomb unique to the music of our time.”
—IRA BRAUS, Professor of Music, The Hartt School
“Your sense of humor is awesome.”—LUKAS FOSS, German-born American composer, pianist & conductor
“…extraordinary work...”
—GEORGE PLIMPTON, American journalist, writer, literary editor, founder of the Paris Review
“...distinctive, inventive ... subversive ... You can hardly be indifferent to Noland’s music and so I would urge you to try it.”
—ROGER BLACKBURN, MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL
“...a glenngouldian personality...”—JOSEPH FENNIMORE, American composer & pianist
“...Art music certainly needs Noland’s Satie-esque humor.”—BRETT CAMPBELL, EUGENE WEEKLY
“...mind-bending spiraling of focus which is truly breathtaking ... spectacular...”—CHARLES AMIRKHANIAN, composer, sound poet & radio producer
“I'm amazed at your harmonic skill. Haven't seen or heard anything like it from any one else—except yours truly—certainly not from your generation. It falls somewhere between Strauss and Mahler. Especially like how you are able to slip in and out from the tonal to the atonal—or near atonal...”—GEORGE ROCHBERG, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist
“...court jester to the classical establishment...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
“...I am bowled over by the expertise of your music: you use certain elements from the 19th century and from jazz, etc., and just at the moment when I am about to say, OK, what else is new?, you do a number of things, such as speeding up, becoming wildly dissonant, modulating to a distant continent, stopping completely and throwing some kind of total surprise ... you seem to know exactly when to do what and how much. I don’t know anybody else who can do it!”
—ANDREW IMBRIE, American composer, Pulitzer Prize finalist
"...Richard Strauss would have loved it.”—JED DISTLER, composer, pianist
“...a witty melange of styles of music...”—THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
“Sheer genius!!!! Move over Bach!!!!!”—ALFRED WATSON, American composer & pianist
“A stairway to paradise in inflatable shoes! I love it!”—ANTONIO CELAYA, composer
“…levitates to those dizzy heights where only the finest piano music by the great composers resides. How so? By fearlessly pushing at tonality's boundaries in a hyperlyrical unfolding of linear poetry... the ingratiating decorum and grace of the most intimate salon is present, however-- it is related in a super-compact density of strictest fugue, a feat in itself that occurs only so very rarely, and especially in such sustained flight.…"—ERNESTO FERRERI, American composer
“This is the epitome of Dada sound-art! ... Gary—you’re a completely unhinged genius! Please continue in this vein for the sake of us all!”—MARK SPEEDING
“Gary Noland's cacophonous Café Ritardando was a puckish exercise in musical bedlam. Bits of Mozart and Strauss collided with six soloists, who were cued by the conductor with flash cards to sing their nonsense text like a ‘valley girl,’ or ‘operatic,’ ‘macho’ or with ‘German accent,’ while the audience was instructed to make noises like a chicken, pig or sheep.”—D.L. GROOVER, HOUSTON PRESS, ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
“... remarkable stuff...”—MAX MORATH, American ragtime pianist, composer, actor & author
“Like an André Rieu opium dream, Noland’s waltz slowly emerged from a morass of sound, solidified into a lush, decadent, Viennese waltz before dissolving and reforming again and again. Like Bernstein, Noland made great use of the familiar, in this case the easily recognized waltz form, but made it personal, unique...”—AARON BERENBACH, NORTHWEST REVERB
“Beautiful ... imaginative brave new music…"—DAVID DEL TREDICI, Pulitzer Prize winning composer
“I LOVED this music!!!! Be sure I will continue to explore your work.”—CANARY BURTON, Program Host, THE LATEST SCORE, WOMR RADIO 92.1FM, Cape Cod, MA
“Gary Noland is the Richard Strauss of the 21st century”—GUILLERMO GALINDO, post-Mexican experimental composer, sonic architect, performance artist & visual media artist
“…music that IS music…”—JAMES YANNATOS, former Music Director of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra
“...Schubert on steroids!”—LENNY CAVALLARO, American composer, author, pianist
"…that is some very cool and very OUT sh*t!"—DMITRI TYMOCZKO, Professor of Music, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
"This could be the long lost 4th act of Der Rosenkavalier, in which Octavian and Sophie drop a huge amount of acid."—JOE MCNALLY, Artistic Director at the HUTCHINS CONSORT
“…While listening, I thought this could have been written by Brahms, a Brahms who loved Chopin and Bach. It is such a beautiful piece, such beautiful and tender harmonies! Every pianist in the world should have it in his (her) repertoire! If you allow me, Gary, I could tell my sincere opinion, that for me, you are the most prominent American composer (of modern classical music) of our times!"—MARIUS HEREA, Romanian composer
“...He walks with assurance through the treacherous landscape of late tonality and early post-tonality (e.g. Strauss)...”—PAYTON MACDONALD, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
“Gary Noland is one of those 21st Century composers seeking to forge a new aesthetic based on older models that do not traffic in serialism or minimalism…"—JACK SULLIVAN, AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE
“...Paranoid Ravel...”—ALEX DUNN, KZSU FM90.3, Stanford, CA
“Hats on sideways, ladies and gentlemen: an oddball! Gary Noland is an American pianist/composer of virtuosic skill and humorous outlook.…”—JIM MOSKOWITZ
“...Frank Zappa kicking Phillip Glass’s ass...”—BRENT WILLIAMS, Barbati’s Pan, Portland, Oregon
"...Ihre Musik ist wunderschön…"—LADISLAV KUPKOVIC, Slovak composer and conductor
