Harry Partch’s compositions of the 1940s—and to some extent his work in general—have remained until recently an unwritten chapter in the history of American music. And yet it was these very pieces—the collection of four works he would later collectively entitle The Wayward—that brought him a small but permanent reputation as a musical maverick who had wandered off well-worn tracks and had developed a sort of lateral extension of his art, independently of any of the main circles of American music. The musical starting point of the compositions of The Wayward is the inflections and rhythms of everyday American speech. From the beginnings of his mature output in 1930 Partch had been devoted to what he called “the intrinsic music of spoken words,” and these four works capture something of the spontaneous musicality of the conversations of the hoboes he befriended during the Great Depression.

ClassicsToday.com, Jed Distler 2/8/2007
Artistic Quality & Sound Quality 10/10 "...a fresh, compelling, lovingly executed, and gorgeously engineered interpretation that all In C fans should hear."

San Francisco Chronicle, Joshua Kosman March 4th, 2007
"...a new and ravishingly beautiful "In C" "Rating: Wild Applause"

Terry Riley¹s masterpiece In C—the work with which American minimalism signed its name in the history book of music—gets a new face lift under the direction of Paul Hillier in this stellar Ars Nova recording. In the liner notes, Hillier explains that, for him, the piece is essentially a contrapuntal work in which “performers are being invited to create polyphony on the spur of the moment.” Hillier had noticed that most previous recordings of In C were for instruments with different timbral characteristics that kept individual lines distinct. In contrast, Hillier felt that the limited timbral range of a chorus would encourage people to hear patterns between the music that each performer was singing. As such, Ars Nova Copenhagen intones Riley's patterns using a wide palette of articulations (for this version, Riley personally underlaid the notes with vocal symbols derived from sacred texts). The singers sensitively employ treble and bass registers, head and chest voice techniques, and both sustained and percussive phrasings. The voices and mallet instruments interact beautifully. Even the steady "pulsing" C-natural upon which everything hangs (provided by a single marimbist) proves a shapelier, more dynamically varied presence than usual. The result of Hillier’s work with Ars Nova Copenhagen is nothing short of an original reinvention of a minimalist classic, one of two “iconic masterpieces” of the 1960s, according to Hiller (the other is Stockhausen’s Stimmung).

Whenever anybody asks me what the best album to buy as a first Zappa album, I tell them either "We're Only In It For The Money" or this one, and I usually give this one a little higher boost.

People often speak of "Stravinsky's music for The Firebird" as if just one work exists; in fact, besides the complete 50-minute ballet score of 1909-10 (written for a very large orchestra including quadruple woodwind and three harps, as well as a piano)...

Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?

Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?

Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?

Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?

Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?Noah Creshevsky uses recorded vocal and instrumental sounds as source material for his electro-acoustic works, dissecting and recombining them in somewhat the same way that Cubists like Braque and Picasso used the elements of representational painting. The result is exciting but challenging -- or should that be the other way round?