New Orchestra of Washington & Alejandro Hernandez-Valdez - Bespoke: Now Commissions for Chamber Orchestra (2017)

“Julian Wachner’s 2014 Chamber Symphony…inaugurates a vibrant and urgent degree of instrumental colour and sonority, as well as exciting, biting rhythms that explore elements of minimalism.enjoyable, engaging and very listenable… This is a rhythmically vital and imaginatively conceived work.
Elena Ruehr’s Shadow Light…is veiled in a rather beautiful melancholy that excludes any hint of the saccharine; a romantic fabric that unerringly leads through moments of drama to a structurally cohesive, thoroughly ‘felt’ conclusion.

The shifting meters in the finale [of Joel Phillip Friedman’s Elastic Band] are part of a full-on, sonically wild Rondo, complete with enticing jazzy lope from the clarinet – Jeremy Eig should be mentioned here for his fine playing - and a slightly sleazy air to the proceedings. This is certainly the most demotic and outgoing of the three pieces.”

Jonathan Woolf, Musicweb International