Opera News reviews Fantastic Mr. Fox

It’s taken Tobias Picker’s second opera more than twenty years to make it to CD, but here it is at last in all its charm and considerable glory. Over the years, Fantastic Mr. Fox has expanded and contracted according to resources available; the original LA Opera staging with Gerald Finley (sporting the title character's  whiskers) was sizable, but a seven-instrument reduction has been a hit at London's Opera Holland Park.

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Media Date 
December 1, 2019
Media Source 
Opera News
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Clive Paget
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Colgrass: Side by Side in Classical CD Choice

Large-scale works referencing the past are on offer here, music that will be unfamiliar to most listeners. Michael Colgrass: Side by Side features three of the composer’s works for large ensemble performed by the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and led by conductor Gil Rose. An American-born Canadian living in Toronto, the Pulitzer Prize-winning and Emmy Award-winning Colgrass holds the unique distinction among prominent classical composers in North America of being the only one whose music is well known equally on both sides of the Canadian-American border.

Media Date 
November 14, 2019
Media Source 
Classical CD Choice
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
Barry Forshaw
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David Sanford: Black Noise on Classical CD Choice

Not for the casual listener, but those with a taste for the adventurous might give this unusual disc a try. BMOP is recognised as the USA’s foremost label launched by an orchestra and devoted exclusively to new music. Black Noise is performed by the enterprising musicians of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and led by conductor Gil Rose.

Media Date 
November 14, 2019
Media Source 
Classical CD Choice
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
Barry Forshaw
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William Schuman: Witch of Endor on Classical CD Choice

This is an accomplished disc, essential for admirers of the talented American composer William Schuman. His ballet suites Judith and Night Journey have been recorded before but never in the kind of wide-ranging surround sound that they are accorded here. As a further incentive to purchase, the disc also contains what is (as far as I can tell) the first recording of another Schuman ballet for Martha Graham, the knottier The Witch of Endor.

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November 14, 2019
Media Source 
Classical CD Choice
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Barry Forshaw
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Michael Colgrass in Texture

How wonderful it is that the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and conductor Gil Rose recently honoured Michael Colgrass (1932-2019) by dedicating a full album to works by the American-born, Toronto-based composer, who passed away on July 2nd at the age of eighty-seven. Not only does the recording showcase the exemplary playing of the ensemble, it provides an excellent sampling of Colgrass's maverick sensibility.

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July 1, 2019
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Boston, MA
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Michael Colgrass in Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Charles Ives you can look to as the father of disparate conjoinings and aural collages when Modern North American composition styles developed and flourished in the last century through to today. Others have followed of course, people like Henry Brandt and, lest we forget, Michael Colgrass. The estimable Boston Modern Orchestra Project gives us the music of the latter with the three-work offering Side By Side (BMOP/Sound 1064). On these works one can note the back and forth one gets from the concerto in Western Classical.

Media Date 
June 20, 2019
Media Source 
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Grego Applegate Edwards
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NYT Beloved Composer: The Week in Classical Music

As the Miller Theater at Columbia University begins to wrap up its 30th-anniversary season — a Composer Portrait concert featuring David T. Little’s music comes next, on Thursday — I’ve been thinking about some of the best concerts I’ve heard there in recent years.

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Media Date 
April 13, 2019
Media Source 
The New York Times
Media Location 
New York, NY
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Seth Colter Walls
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David Sanford in I Care If You Listen

In relation to music, noise occupies a particularly complex position in the history of African American musical cultures. Historically, white listeners musically and culturally disenfranchised enslaved African Americans by characterizing their drumming and spirituals as noise out of fear
of violent revolt. The descendants of these same listening practices have labelled certain jazz idioms, rap, hip-hop, and their stylistic progeny as forbidden and dangerous, but these characterizations neglect the validity and reality of African American experiences expressed in

Media Date 
May 3, 2019
Media Source 
I Care If You Listen
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Jacob Kopcienski
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David Sanford in Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review

Afro-American composer David Sanford shows a musical Modernism with a healthy admixture of "Jazz" influences on his recent recording of orchestra works Black Noise (BMOP Sound 1063). The three works so nicely captured by Gil Rose and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, along with the cello solo vibrancy of Matt Haimovitz for the "Scherzo Grosso" work.

Media Date 
May 17, 2019
Media Source 
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Grego Applegate Edwards
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David Sanford in Classical CD Review

American composer David Sanford (b. Pittsburgh 1963) came from a highly musical family. He always had a keen interest in jazz, big and music, and played the trombone. He attended the University of Northern Colorado, The New England Conservatory of Music, and Princeton. Now he is a faculty member at Mount Holyoke College. After studying in Italy in 2002, he formed the Pittsburgh Collective which included both classical and jazz musicians.

Media Date 
March 1, 2019
Media Source 
Classical CD Review
Media Location 
Boston, MA
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Media Contact Name 
Robert Benson
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