VIDEOS
Playing it UNsafe Composer Journeys: Sean Friar Part 1
Playing it UNsafe Composer Journeys: Sean Friar Part 3 – Handing Off the Junk
Sean Friar, Clunker Concerto Composer, on Andrew Andrew Sound Sound on East Village Radio
Playing it UNsafe Composer Journeys: Sean Friar Part 2 – Auditioning Textures
Nominees for the Gaudeamus Prize 2011
AUDIO
All the Cool Parts, Episode 27, NOW Ensemble: Awake, June 12, 2011
No Extra Notes, Interview with Sean Friar, May 10, 2010
HERALD SCOTLAND: Psappha, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, Glasgow, January 30, 2012. By Keith Bruce.
[... the craftsmanship of Sean Friar's Scale 9 was undeniable...]
THE GUARDIAN & OBSERVER: LPO/Jurowski; Betrothal in a Monastery; Psappha ensemble; SCO/Ticciati – Review, January 29, 2012. By Fiona Maddocks.
[In a programme packed with new works, three Scotland-based composers featured alongside Americans Steve Reich – the Scottish premiere of his Double Sextet – and Sean Friar (b 1985), whose short, buzzy Scale 9 provided a euphoric opener.]
J. Simon Vanderwalt: Notes from a concert, January 26, 2012.
[Sean Friar’s Scale 9 which opened the programme was likeable and energetic, a sort of andante and allegro, or rather andante and blues, in a post- (very-post-) Gershwin vein.]
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER: Three Centuries of Clarinet Music, January 24, 2012. By Stephen Smoliar.
[... compelling dramatism... there was definitely no shortage of Spinal Tap dynamics [in "Velvet Hamer"]
AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME: Bright Lights Shine for the Arts in Rome During Four Days in December, December 28, 2011.
[... an enthusiastic crowd gathered in the Salone for a recital by composer and Samuel Barber Rome Prize-winner Sean Friar and his partner, oboist Claire Brazeau. [It was] a program beautifully balanced between solo works for piano and oboe and duos. Friar himself performed his extremely demanding composition Elastic Loops, which the audience had heard present a significant challenge to soloist Marco Marzocchi during the Nuova Consonanza music marathon… in November.]
VULGO: Crashing Young Americans!, December 12, 2011. By Aisling Ryan.
[I got a real kick out of Sean Friar's Velvet Hammer, not only as a piece in it's own right, but as an opportunity to see guitarist John Godfrey move out of the chilled space of experimental guitar sounds and into the rough and tumble of rock guitar!]
THE SCORE: Review: Young Americans, Crash Ensemble, December 2, 2011. By Anna Murray.
THE IRISH TIMES: Crash Ensemble/Pierson, November 29, 2011. By Michael Dervan.
[Los Angeles-born Sean Friar's insistently pulsing Velvet Hammer, for an ensemble featuring electric guitar, set out to create a kind of "super-electric guitar". Friar even uses the other instruments as a kind trompe l'oreille in what came across as a sort of love statement about its central instrument.]
AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME: ‘Nuova Consonanza’ New Music Festival, Novembver 25, 2011. By Karl Kirchwey.
[Friar's Short Winds, originally for wind quartet but transcribed here for the first time for saxophone quartet, was delightfully brash and seductive...]
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN:SONiC Festival – Ensemble Klang Brings More Rhythm Than the Upper West Side Can Handle, October 21, 2011. By Thomas Deneuville.
[Sean Friar's Little Green Pop was particularly impressive at drawing out the capacity of the ensemble to blend. The accents in this piece felt... like springtime bursting out...]
AMERICAN ACADEMY IN ROME: Contemporary Music Festival Brings Capacity Crowd to the Sala Aurelia, October 4, 2011. By Karl Kirchwey.
[Sean Friar's Teaser (2010) for solo cello, an extraordinary exploration of that instrument's potential...]
SLATE MAGAZINE: Horns, harps, and hubcaps: The classical orchestra needs some new instruments, July 19, 2011. By J. Bryan Lowder.
[Friar's Clunker Concerto came off sounding both refreshingly new and solidly mature... Friar was able to throw open the windows of the orchestral attic, allowing fresh sounds and a wonderfully unexpected musical perspective to rejuvenate the old form... This is orchestral music that anyone can appreciate. Its dialect is new and exciting, but also familiar, rooted in the funky grooves and rock sensibility of our era. It doesn't take on airs, but instead takes joy in the process of discover - in the continual experience of suspense and surprise - that good classical music has always championed."
ALL MUSIC: NOW Ensemble, AWAKE: REVIEW. By Stephen Eddins
[The music... conveys an infectious optimism that's worlds apart from both the angst-y complexity that long characterized contemporary classical composition and the nostalgic, reactionary return to old-fashioned tonality... Even the more dissonant and timbrally piercing tracks like Sean Friar's Velvet Hammer ... seem to be undergirded essentially with that kind of positive energy.]
SYMPATICO AUTOS: Symphony played on scrap car parts
… [Clunker Concerto] opens with the disassembly of a mocked-up old car. Its hubcaps, fenders and brakes are picked up by the musicians and used as instruments – bows drawn across them, mallets used to strike them – and the sound is simply stunning…”
POP MATTERS: NOW Ensemble – Awake / Chiara String Quartet/Matmos – Jefferson Friedman Quartets, June 27, 2011
… if an album like Awake is of any indication of future potential, we are in for some downright masterpieces.
EMUSIC: NOW Ensemble Awake, June 2011, Seth Colter Walls.
Note the holy disquiet announced by a piercing flute that Sean Friar stretches over grandly sustained piano-poundings during his “Velvet Hammer.” (And be sure to hang around for the piece’s kinetic, whirling final seconds.) Anyone want to call that soft?”
TEXTURA: NOW Ensemble: Awake
… the album’s material is constantly engrossing, regardless of whether it’s pensive (“Awake”) or aggressive (“Velvet Hammer”).
COMPULSIVE READER: Chamber Music of Memory and Mischief: NOW Ensemble, Awake, June 24, 2011.
… [Velvet Hammer] seems a fusion of classical music and rock, and possibly, distantly, jazz. Even with its tumult, it seems demanding, experimental – and classical: one hears the control of instrumentation and effect, the designed and extended patterns.
TIMEOUT CHICAGO: NOW Ensemble – Awake | Album Review, June 21, 2011
… David Crowell, Missy Mazzoli and Sean Friar are savvy choices to complete an album.
BOSTON GLOBE: Lush Landscapes, Majestic Motifs, Shifting Strings, June 19, 2011
All [the pieces on "Awake"] make for involving listening… Sean Friar’s “Velvet Hammer” and Missy Mazzoli’s “Magic with Everyday Objects” veer precipitously between gentle melody and bursts of distorted guitar … It’s tough to shoehorn the music on “Awake” into traditional categories, but it doesn’t matter: Here is an album that offers a lot of engaging new music.”
SILENT BALLET: NOW Ensemble – Awake, June 2, 2011
… as this spectacular opening topples into Sean Friar’s Velvet Hammer, a frantic, shrieking Hitchcockian descent into madness, the listener becomes convinced that Awake is something special.
UNIVERSITY PRESS CLUB, Chords for Clunkers, April 27, 2011
ALARM PRESS, This Week’s Best Albums, April 26, 2011
[... a distant touch of dark, distorted guitar and ominous accents complement "Velvet Hammer" ... and perhaps future albums by NOW Ensemble will share traits with more of the New Amsterdam roster.]
BANGKOK POST, Eloquent Collection of Contemporary Pieces, April 18, 2011
… there is much to marvel at in the variety of timbres and moods [Sean Friar] gets from [repeated notes and chords], from woodpeckerish tappings to ringing peals to pounding attacks, all in six or so kaleidoscopic minutes.
WQXR, Q2 Album of the Week, April 18, 2011
… the haunting whirlwind of Sean Friar’s Velvet Hammer…”
THE CLASSICAL REVIEW: NOW Ensemble Awake, April 11, 2011
NEW YORK TIMES, American Composers Orchestra Review, March 8, 2011. By Vivien Schweizer.
Musicians have time to perfect unusual procedures like those in Sean Friar’s [lively] “Clunker Concerto,” where the percussionists elicit pitches from a car fender and also bow hubcaps and other parts found in a scrap yard.”
CLASSICAL TV: The Drift, March 2, 2011
CARNEGIE HALL BLOG: Junkyard wars in Zankel Hall?, February 27, 2011
PALISADIAN POST: , Gifted Young Composer Earns Princeton Fellowship, September 5, 2007
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