REVIEWS OF DC MECKLER MUSIC

 

 

 

 

Apollo 14

LUNAR MISSION AS OPERA SUBJECT NOT A LOONY IDEA

Source: NORA VILLAGRAN, Mercury News, Published on May 8, 2002, Page 1F, San Jose Mercury News (CA)

New York City Opera Composer-in-Residence Mark Adamo and Artistic Director of Vox 2002: Showcasing American Composers, talking about Apollo 14 and the Showcase series.  "The opera is very unusual.  To take a 20th-century subject and put it in an ancient form is very fresh.  No other submission [to the New York City Opera Showcase program] was like it; that's I want that's why I wanted it for our final piece.  There is also something about the notion of the moon journey and leaping into space that's a lovely way to end our series." 

 

 

Apollo 14

“[In the "Toccata di Luna" from Apollo 14,] Meckler created a marvelous ensemble and vocal pattern effect with his techno-patter technique.”

William Susman, "Fresh Choice," 21st Century Music, November 2001, p. 4.

 

 

 

Piano Trio, A Hazardous Similar Harmony

Picasso Ensemble Shines at Spring Recital, Chris Sentieri, The Voice, Cabrillo College, April 30, 2004

“... the Picasso Ensemble presented a rare and exciting treat as they premiered a new work, composed for the ensemble by contemporary composer David Meckler.  The composition, titled A Hazardous Similar Harmony, was fresh and, at times, quite cerebral.  Meckler's complex sense of dissonance and unusual treatment of dynamics seemed to fit the ensemble like a glove.  This modern composition was a suitable vehicle for the Picasso Ensemble; the broad tonal strokes, sudden crescendos and colorful flurries of notes seemed to invoke images of the group's namesake.”

 

 

 

Bliss

San Francisco Classical Voice Website

CONTEMPORARY MUSIC REVIEW, 17 March 2000

Heart, Body And Soul, All On Percussion

By Thomas Goss

“ . . .  If Cage and [Michael] Gandolfi dished up heart, and Rouse body, David Meckler provided the soul with Bliss, an instrumental transformation of the "Accomplishment" aria from his Apollo 14: A Space Opera and an oasis of serenity between the Cage and the Rouse. The percussion was restricted to a simple back-and-forth ostinato of two intervals of a seventh, while a solo cello emoted deeply felt, cautiously unveiled conviction. Part love song, part prayer, it soothed while stirring, underlining the expressive abilities of cellist Victoria Ehrlich.”  http://www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/adesso_3_21_00.html

 

 

 

Stuck Piano I & II

Novae Gives Voice To Promising Composers

Review by PETER LEFEVRE

Special to the Register

Orange County Register

“ . . .  Also on the program were David Meckler's "Stuck Piano I & II," a stark and gruesome piece given a

technically polished reading by [Nelson] Ojeda, and "Before Silence," a brass quartet by David Dieni

that created fascinating textures while showing a bit too much fondness for discord.”

 

Stuck Piano I

Oh well!  In 20th Century Music, Thomas Goss called a performance of Stuck Piano I by Sarah Cahill “balm for the ears.”  Op. 415 Marathon, San Francisco.

 

 

 

Symmetry Jumps

Compositions By Students, Master Reflect Impact Of Their Times 

By HERMAN TROTTER  New Musk Critic    REVIEW  June 10, 1990

June In Buffalo VII  Final concert in the University at Buffalo's annual student-faculty festival.  

Saturday evening in Slee Hall, UB North Campus in Amherst.    

 

“ . . . The students' works may have lacked Wuorinen's assurance of form, but they compensated with music that had more immediate sonic appeal.  David Meckler's Symmetry Jumps, for wind quintet, was conducted by Jesse Levine. It proved a playful and sportive work, yet somehow serious too, moving from parallel homophonic phases through polyphonic expression to a region of pointillist textures, long roulades and pensive incantations for solo instruments. Meckler threw a nice curve with a quote from "Tristan."  Levine conducted [a] superb performance of Meckler's work . . . “

 

 

 

Not about my music, but rather my words about music . . .

View from the Gap

by Kyle Gann

Review of UCSD Emerging Voices Festival, Village Voice, 21 March 1995

 

“Ph.D. candidate David C. Meckler, in a paper titled "Tis a Gift To Be Simple, but It Takes Courage to Be Painfully Obvious," pointed out that new music composers avoid dialogues with living pop figures and plunder only the dead, as in the Kronos Quartet's arrangement of "Purple Haze."  As if on cue, the [Bang on a Can] All-Stars played a Nirvana tune as an encore, with Maya Beiser wailing the vocal line on cello.  Meckler further complained that fans to take Hendrix and Nirvana seriously feel insulted by new music groups that marginalize rock songs as "fun pieces" for encores.  [Actually, I only suggested that fans might feel that way, and I wasn’t really complaining . . .] Fair enough . . .

. . . given the usual time lag before experimental music becomes eligible for academic treatment, why did Meckler undertake his discriminating analysis of passages by [Steve] Martland, Michael Gordon, and other young New Yorkers decades ahead of schedule? . . .”