Reviews (and other press)
“In
the tradition of Monteverdi and Lassus … should be heard by
anyone
with the slightest affinity to the a cappella heritage.” - Madamina
Craig
Zeichner from The American Music Center’s NEWMUSICBOX.ORG
“At first listen, Michael Dellaira’s music is clearly twentieth
century - there are characteristics of the minimalist school – but
when you listen closer you notice something else is
happening. USA Stories, a 1998 choral
work based on texts taken from John Dos Passos’s The Big Money, is
filled with effects that would not have been out of place in Renaissance or early Baroque music. One of the movements, “Rudolph Valentino:
Adagio Dancer”, features layers of voices that overlap with the complexity of
Renaissance polyphony.
“The Wright Brothers: The Campers at Kitty Hawk” is a quicksilver romp that is not so far removed from the stile concertato that Claudio Monteverdi used in his madrigals.”
Eric Salzman, composer, critic and author
of the bestselling An Introduction to 20th Century Music:
“The first impression that Michael Dellaira's work gives is that of simple beauty, no small virtue in and of itself. But listen again. Repeated hearings reveal a musical world of depth and subtlety, marked by the kinds of surprises that are the mark of a sure and confident ear.
Michael has something to
tell us. He has created a personal musical language that combines the harmonic
vocabulary and rhythmic interest of rock music with the technical rigor of the
best modern classical music. This, of course, is no surprise, given his
background both as a professional rock songwriter
and performer and his training as composer and theorist at Princeton with
Milton Babbitt and others. It is this combination and synthesis of seemingly
contradictory elements which points to the direction of new American music in a
new century and which gives both surface tension and excitement, and deeper
value to Michael's music.”
Mark
Alburger from 21st CENTURY MUSIC:
“… touches of minimalism
and popular sensibilities allied to
romanticism and rapture,
for results both beautiful and moving.”
Read the entire review here.
Robert Carl from FANFARE MAGAZINE:
“…a composer with a personal and substantive take on choral writing.
Read the entire review here.
David
Hurwitz from CLASSICSTODAY.COM:
“Just a few seconds'
listening to The Stranger, Grief …
reveals composer
Michael Dellaira's sympathy for text setting and
flair for vocal writing.”
Read the entire review here.
Amanda
MacBlaine from The American Music Center’s NEWMUSICBOX.ORG:
“Also in the business of
converting poetry (and prose) into song,
Michael Dellaira’s
haunting harmonies exalt his chosen texts which include excerpts from John Dos
Passos' The Big Money and poems by Emily Dickinson and Richard Howard.
Though trained at Princeton in the twelve-tone idiom Dellaira's thoughtful
choral and vocal settings of
poetry and prose are
anything but formulaic.”
Alan Gimbel from the AMERICAN
RECORD GUIDE:
“The chorus punches out the lengthy prose texts in a
jagged minimalist-influenced style packed with insistent syncopations …. I found this a clever and engaging idea.”
On ‘THE ORCHESTRA ACCORDING TO THE SEVEN”, a compilation of
contemporary orchestral pieces, including Michael Dellaira’s “Three Rivers”
“Particularly striking is
Michael Dellaira’s Three Rivers, an example of gentle orchestral
minimalism.” – 20th Century Music –
Dec. 1997
“Folk rock guitar styles
drive MD’s Three Rivers, a pleasantly diverting tone poem depicting
rivers in New York, a rock album, and Ovid.
It is amazing how three such disparate sources inspired such seamlessly
coherent sections of conservatorially-correct tonal music.” - American Record Guide – Mar/Apr 97
On MAUD
“The work had a certain
eloquence … There was real sensitivity in the taped music as well as in the
voice part, and Miss Steele’s penetrating interpretation did much to make the
performance compelling.” –
Allen Hughes, The New York Times
“…impassioned and
nuanced.” - Jeff Talman, Ear Magazine April
90
Press on CHÉRI
New York Times: “Where Opera and
Musicals Overlap a Hybrid Emerges”
New Music Connoisseur:
“At the Temple of Dramatic Studies”
