Search - Ann Southam, Gary Kulesha, Composers' Orchestra :: Southam: Glass Houses

RE: the composition "Webster's Spin, for orchestra"

Bill Stella | Somerville, NJ USA | 08/28/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I won't be able to review the entire album, but "Webster's Spin, for orchestra," the first track on the album, was just now broadcast on WNYC-FM in NYC, and I very, very much enjoyed it. I am not a classical music afficionado, so perhaps this is not music for those for whom the grandness of Beethoven's Fifth epitomizes all that is good about music. For those of you remaining, the composition is largely a beautiful counterpoint for strings. It evoked, to my ears, elements of (Asian) Indian classical violin and Phillip Glass at his prettiest, and (struggling to describe the quality of the counterpoint) sounded like what I imagine the music a composer might write to express the experience of an Impressionist painting painted to express the experience of hearing a Bach Invention wafting over a riverbank might sound like. (A run-on sentence, but it will have to do.) Someday I hope to hear the rest of the album."