cindy mctee
reviews
SOLSTICE FOR TROMBONE AND ORCHESTRA
McTee . . . writes music that an audience can like. After the [Houston Symphony] played her Circuits (1990) at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion in 2000, I noted that the piece was a "charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America. ... (It) aptly illustrated the electric, almost convulsive nature of American society near the start of the 21st century." After listening to her . . . Solstice, I think it's more winning music.
Symphony trombonist gets a musical treat
Though the Houston Symphony's marketing folks labeled the weekend's program Graf's Mozart and Haydn, the meat lay elsewhere in works for trombone and mezzo-soprano soloists.
Thursday's first performance featured the premiere of Solstice for trombone and orchestra by Cindy McTee as well as Gustav Mahler's Rueckert Lieder. Principal trombonist Allen Barnhill and Rice University opera star Susanne Mentzer were splendid in the two very different types of music.
Solstice is the latest piece commissioned by the Houston Symphony for its principal players. Barnhill and the artistic staff chose McTee, a professor at the University of North Texas. She produced a three-movement piece teeming with a musical language that is distinctly and refreshingly American.
One principal McTee used in the work was the notion of stasis, a term from the sciences that, among other things, can describe a state where things are static or motionless, even if there seems to be a frenzy of activity on the surface. McTee used the idea in all three movements but many times, especially in the first, the result was distinctly similar to the vamping an accompanying ensemble uses for a soloist in popular music and jazz.
Many allusions to jazz dotted the work, products of a musical mind that has absorbed defining styles of American music and turned elements into its own, distinctive voice. Many times Barnhill's solo could be heard as the output of a master wailing away in free jazz. Lots of the chords in the middle movement were straight from the world of jazz ballads (though, again, McTee was exploring other technical elements of style).
Solstice was vibrant and high-charged in the outer movements (notwithstanding the stasis) and evocatively sober in the elegiac middle movement. The only thing I would have liked was an additional segment of music in the first movement to ratchet the tension and energy up even further before going, without pause, into the middle movement.
Barnhill played with masterful control. His tone was burnished, his legato a pleasure for its seamlessness, and the power and agility impressive.
Charles Ward
The Houston Chronicle
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FINISH LINE
The guild-commissioned piece, sponsored in recognition of its 50th anniversary, opened the concert with a far more contemporary sound than anything that followed. Composer Cindy McTee's work, inspired by the [early 20th-century] art movement called futurism and by her love of fast cars, showed off the symphony as the finely tuned machine it is. The piece had a nicely bracing quality, thanks to some occasional dissonance, clever rhythms and hints of the Doppler effect in the horns. Quite fun.
Chip Chandler
Amarillo Globe-News
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EINSTEIN'S DREAM
Great issues – from time and space to subatomic particles – frame quite a clever Dallas Symphony Orchestra program this week.
It opens with the world premiere of a DSO commission: Einstein's Dream, by Cindy McTee, a composition professor at the University of North Texas. This 14-minute piece for strings, percussion and computer sounds honors the centenary of Einstein's theory of relativity. And its sections, played without pause, bear evocative titles including "Warps and Curves in the Fabric of Space and Time" and "Celestial Bells – Wondering at the Secrets."In Dr. McTee's score the orchestra plays along with prerecorded, computer-altered sounds. They range from fairly recognizable bell tones to eerie whooshes to a speaking voice (DSO artistic administrator Victor Marshall) fragmented into mere percussive effects.
Honoring Einstein's devotion to Bach, the strings begin with a Bach harmonization of the Lutheran hymn "We all believe in one God." Busy dithers define "Chasing after Quanta" and "The Frantic Dance of Subatomic Particles." A free-ranging violin solo (ably played by concertmaster Emanuel Borok) floats over "Pondering the Behavior of Light." In the end, after oozing clusters, strings set dissonant chords aglow before gradually uniting on the pitch E – for Einstein.
Led by music director Andrew Litton, the DSO gave a convincing account Thursday evening, at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center. Dr. McTee gave a personable spoken introduction to the piece, and she was warmly applauded at the end.
Scott Cantrell
The Dallas Morning News
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The world premiere of Einstein's Dream by University of North Texas Professor Cindy McTee on Thursday night at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center set the mood for an evening of immensely compelling music-making with a strong philosophical undertone. For 14 fascinating minutes, McTee creates an eclectic and constantly ear-catching mixture including musical quotation from Bach, a human voice electronically manipulated and dozens of other devices pulling irresistibly to a final unison E (in honor of Einstein's famous formula).
Wayne Lee Gay
The Star-Telegram
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The year 2005 is the centenary of the published genius of Albert Einstein. Cindy McTee, a composer from Texas, chose to create her musical vision of this anniversary. A recording of sounds began "Einstein's Dream," and continued in and out through the piece, while the LSCO added strings and percussion along with the electronic input. While this concept is not new, it does mark another first for Friesen and the LSCO. The recording offered bells, chimes, bubbles and screeches as the instruments played a chorale. The piece ended on a perfect unison note, as if defining the complex clarity of Einstein's thinking.
FANFARE
Cindy McTee's Fanfare for Trumpets, though very brief, holds one's attention as two trumpets seem to have a sort of musical argument.
Robert McColley
Fanfare Magazine
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. . . trumpet mavens should relish Cindy McTee's urgent Fanfare, in which the two instruments imitate and compete with one another . . .
Donald Rosenberg
The Gramophone
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This listener was also drawn to Cindy McTee's Fanfare for Trumpets and Martin Mailman's Concertino for Trumpet as outstanding examples of writing for the trumpet.
Peter Wood
The International Trumpet Guild Journal
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BALLET FOR BAND
Please also see reviews of the orchestral version. . . . a bubbly Introduction, a humorous Waltz, and a whirling Finale . . .
Barry Kilpatrick
American Record Guide
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The concert on this newest release is, like the others in the series, varied and entertaining, ranging from Frank Ticheli’s explosive, high-energy Symphony No.2 to Cindy McTee’s Ballet for Band, a whimsical, fragmented tribute to dance rhythms.
Rad Bennett
GoodSound!
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ADAGIO
Dr. McTee, who teaches at the University of North Texas, has produced a number of impressive compositions, and her Adagio for string quartet, performed Friday night, does nothing to spoil her record. In fact, it would make a decent substitute for Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings as a solemn commemorative piece. The work is a transcription of a movement of Dr. McTee's Symphony No. 1, which was premiered by the National Symphony. The new format is unusual in that Dr. McTee has taken away one violin from the traditional string quartet and added a second cello. This emphasizes the gravity of the piece without imparting any sense of imbalance. . . . although often highly chromatic [the quartet] does not seem in the least abrasive. It's an impressive work.
Olin Chism
The Dallas Morning News
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There is much to engage the ear . . .
Tim Smith
The Baltimore Sun
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. . . a throaty elegy . . .
Steve Smith
The Washington Post
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. . . lush string writing . . .
Allan Kozinn
The New York Times
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SYMPHONY NO. 1: BALLET FOR ORCHESTRA
Brilliantly orchestrated . . . the work is notable for its energy, its sense of movement and the skill with which it brings disparate elements into harmony. Although it uses some modern techniques, the effect is . . . extremely audience-friendly. Audiences are likely, in return, to become McTee-friendly.
Joe McLellan
Classical music critic emeritus of The Washington Post
redludvig.com
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Her compositional muse, she says, "begins as a rhythmical stirring and leads to a physical response," which in this case resulted in a smartly assembled, traditionally structured work that shamelessly borrows licks from [a] myriad sources -- jazz, Beethoven, Ravel's "La Valse" and much more -- but fuses them with highly original skill into a single voice, the composer's own. McTee wrote it on commission for Slatkin and the NSO, who advocated her juicy inventions with stylish commitment, most particularly in the final movement where motifs zigzag freely over a taut rhythmic canvas.
Ronald Broun
The Washington Post
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. . . the symphony . . . comes across with a gritty energy and abundant cleverness. There is much to engage the ear - from the growling, down-in-the-depths woodwind solos of the first movement and dark lyricism of the second, to an affectionate take-off on Maurice Ravel's La Valse in the third and groans of exotic percussion instruments punctuating the jazzy fourth. Structural clarity and sophisticated orchestration add to the assets. McTee's style falls into that neo-tonal category so prevalent today, but avoids turning faceless.
Tim Smith
The Baltimore Sun
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In the explanatory notes for her Symphony No. 1, subtitled "Ballet for Orchestra," Cindy McTee evokes such literary heavyweights as Jung, Byron and Milton. Sidestepping such portent, however, the piece borrowed more liberally from other sources, particularly Beethoven, Penderecki, Ravel and jazz. The result was a well-crafted, attractive and athletic synthesis that provided ample opportunity for the orchestra to shine, including an audacious extended contrabassoon solo in the first movement, a throaty elegy for the strings in the second and a boisterous, Bernsteinian jazz blowout in the finale, which the audience rewarded enthusiastically.
Steve Smith
The Washington Post
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The program's centerpiece was Ms. McTee's work, a four-movement tour of dance forms through which philosophically broader materials are woven. The lush string writing in the slow movement, for example, makes passing allusions to Krzysztof Penderecki's Requiem and Barber's Adagio for Strings; a touch of "La Valse" wafts through the Waltz movement; and the finale touches on everything from laid-back country fiddling to the brutal fortissimo chords of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" and some decidedly jazzy brass writing.
Ms. McTee's sense of organization kept the work from becoming a pastiche: as diverse as its ideas were, they seemed to unfold naturally within an orchestral fabric that used the ensemble's full coloristic range. The work's dance impulses also gave the program its theme. (Click here for complete review.)
Allan Kozinn
The New York Times
TIMEPIECE
. . . [Andrew] Litton brought along a souvenir from his Dallas years, a curtain-raiser that he commissioned from Cindy McTee called "Timepiece" . . . an engaging, pulsating, grooving mechanism . . .
Richard S. Ginell
The Los Angeles Times
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Cindy McTee's "Timepiece" got the concert off to an enjoyable start. The work was written in 2000 for Litton and the Dallas Symphony on the occasion of the orchestra's centennial. In her spoken remarks, she mentioned her upbringing in jazz and that's what came through strongly in "Timepiece." Which is not to say that it is jazz but that it has that air. The flittering lines cavort like scat and the language is dissonant but in the decorative and cool way of jazz — it bites and sizzles. The brass and percussion get used a lot; dance is never far away (the woodblock keeps returning with a ticktock beat to restore order). All in all, it's one of the more successful fusions of the jazz and symphonic styles that I've heard and it could have gone on longer than it's eight minutes as far as I was concerned.
Timothy Mangan
The Orange County Register
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Timepiece is another flashy (in a good sense) McTee score . . . [with its] unique brand of rhythmic disjunction and wood/percussion harmonies that together build both fascinating structure and visceral excitement. She is never less than fascinating when she plays with seeming incongruities: the "possibility of suspended time and the opportunity for continuous forward movement." And the infusion of humor, another McTee trait, notably keeps Timepiece worth hearing again and again.
Mike Silverton
Fanfare Magazine
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[Timepiece] is bold, concise, elegantly crafted and intentionally clear. There is an intelligence and clarity of architectural design beneath the surface of this exciting, rhythmic landscape.
Citation from
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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Apart from a couple of patches of glimmering string chords, [Timepiece] chattered and bristled for all its eight minutes. With crosscuttings of time signatures, little rhythmic gestures were dovetailed and set scrambling one another. The piece was exhilarating and cleverly wrought . . .
Scott Cantrell
The Dallas Morning News
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The third world premiere [Timepiece] presented by the Dallas Symphony in its 1999-2000 season was easily the most successful. [It] was succinct, eventful and intelligent in the hands of conductor Andrew Litton.In the program notes, McTee revealed the use of an octatonic scale and a 12-tone row in the piece; the listener is more aware of an appealing aura of ambivalent tonality and general avoidance of dissonance -- and of constantly engaging orchestral tone color. The effects are often gently humorous: percussion noises puncture cloudlike textures in the strings and quasi-minimalist repetition takes surprising turns .Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 is frequently thrown out as bait at orchestral concerts featuring new music, apparently on the theory that audiences will sit through a new piece to hear this old favorite. At last night's concert, however, not only was the new piece by McTee immediately approachable, but the performance of the Tchaikovsky was remarkably fresh and ear-opening.
Wayne Lee Gay
The Star-Telegram
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As any Texas orchestra traveling abroad should, the Dallas Symphony has included a work by a major Texas composer. Cindy McTee . . . has mixed moments that recall Bernstein, Glass and Mahler, and she stirred in bits of humor and tossed in lively counterpoint in Timepiece, a succinct tribute to the turn of the millennium that will represent the best in contemporary American composition for the European audiences.
Wayne Lee Gay
The Star-Telegram
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Cindy McTee's Timepiece, commissioned and premiered last season by the DSO, again impressed as an exuberant and finely crafted nine minutes' worth.
Scott Cantrell
The Dallas Morning News
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. . . an invigorating curtain raiser.
Scott Cantrell
The Dallas Morning News
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"Timepiece" is a fine program opener . . . built upon the ticking sound implied in its title. It contrasts blocks of breathing, gentle string chords with episodes of industrious busyness. The recurring ticking gives the music an air both mechanical and funky, like a soundtrack for a film about a factory in the Jazz Age.
Anne Midgette
The New York Times
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[The first section] contrasts a wild variety of percussion set against a bed of muted strings providing strangely comforting dissonance. In the second sections, the work becomes decidedly more brassy and energetic. Relying on chord textures and rhythm more than melody, this piece is accessible and evocative, and the composer was well congratulated by the audience when she came out for a bow.
John Sutherland
The Seattle Times
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. . . Timepiece is bright, energetic and richly flavored . . .
R.M. Campbell
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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Timepiece by Texas-based Cindy McTee, provided a totally exhilarating exploration of momentum. Under Andrew Litton, the Dallas players delivered it with exuberant delight.
Christopher Morley
Birmingham Post
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To open the evening, Kahane brought Dallas composer Cindy McTee onstage to introduce her evocative Timepiece, in which the orchestra churned with a tick-tock intensity reminiscent of John Adams and Steve Reich - but with a recurring eight-tone scale and splash of color that gave this eight-minute piece a vibrant, fresh individuality.
Marc Shulgold
Rocky Mountain News
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EINSTEIN'S DREAMS
[Einstein's Dreams] is an immediately likable work . . . whose seven movements are, at worst, interesting, and, at best, simply beautiful. The use of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, vibraphone, and piano gives attractive instrumental color to musical ideas of substance.
Olin Chism
The Dallas Morning News
Lawrence A. Johnson
Fanfare Magazine
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Cindy McTee shows a deep understanding of the possibilities of the [wind] medium in her exciting and expressive Soundings.
Stephen Hicken
American Record Guide
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CIRCLE MUSIC
Cindy McTee's "Circle Music IV," for horn and piano, is a thought-provoking piece centered on the soothing sonority of an ever-present major chord, over which dissonances freely surface.
David Abrams
Syracuse Herald-Journal
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CIRCUITS
The program began with the New York premiere of Cindy McTee's "Circuits," a churning, propulsive exercise in orchestral momentum. Instrumentally sharp-edged and rhythmically insistent throughout, it stood apart from its more opaque companions.
Alex Ross
The New York Times
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Cindy McTee brings to the world of concert music a fresh and imaginative voice. Circuits . . . fairly bursts forth with energy and orchestrational flair. This is more than your usual post-minimalism. It is a full-fledged talent that begs not to be categorized but to be recognized as a true original.
Citation from
The American Academy of Arts and Letters
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Last night's program at the kennedy Center opened with a Slatkin specialty, a recently written "accessible" work by an American composer. Cindy McTee's "Circuits," completed in 1992, chugs along for all its six minutes at a very steady if urgently quick pace. McTee avoids the rock-influenced composer's tendency to overuse the percussion section. The percussion parts are central to "Circuits" yet remain humbly, whimsically in an accompanying role, and she makes charming use of bright, perky instruments – cowbells, wood blocks, a glockenspiel. Despite the electronic title, the piece is on a perceptibly human scale; indeed at moments "Circus" might have been a more appropriate title. I wish they had played it twice.
Pierre Ruhe
The Washington Post
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[Circuits ] lasted only six minutes, but its energy, crisp orchestral color and lively percussion left me wanting much more.
John Huxbold
The St. Louis Post Dispatch
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[Circuits ] is a whirlwind of a piece in which repeated patterns fly by with relentless energy. McTee has a knack for joining fragments into nonstop figures, and her percussion writing runs the gamut from subtle to booming. Other composers in recent years have latched onto this bright, breathless style, but McTee makes a refreshing thing of it in six minutes.
Donald Rosenberg
The Plain Dealer
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Circuits, a frequently performed work, is an exuberant piece for orchestra whose elements include some fast ostinatos that could arguable be considered minimalist, and some sharp punctuation by the percussion that brings on irreverent thoughts of Spike Jones and his City Slickers. It's a blast, and a refutation of the charge that modern composers don't know how to express joy.
Olin Chism
The Dallas Morning News
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McTee explained Circuits in such terms as "energy," "movement" and "circles." In this work she transposes those qualities into a witty, exciting essay, its unfailing continuity based on persistent melodic-rhythmic motives repeated with subtle variations.
Cecilia Porter
The Washington Post
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. . . a brief barnburner of a score . . . Circuits has minimalist leanings, but is richer in its tonal palette and harmonic textures . . . with its whirring string passages punctuated by rippling percussion . . .
Channing Gray
The Providence Journal
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With its racing ostinato figures, percussion pratfalls and daredevil stunts, and jazzy syncopations, [Circuits] has an almost Keystone Kops kind of wit. It zips by on fast-forward and you're left breathless and chuckling at the end.
Ellen Pfeifer
The Boston Globe
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. . . music with visceral appeal.
Gary A. Panetta
The Peoria Journal Star
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. . . a delightful 10-minute romp that combined jazzy brass, whimsical percussion and driving, repetitive string phrases . . .
T.J. Medrek
The Boston Herald
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[Circuits] belongs to the category of trim, fast, precisely engineered music that measures out its distance and reaches it on time, without the slightest suggestion of dawdling or indulgence.
Roger Covel
The Sydney Morning Herald
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Circuits . . . was a charging, churning celebration of the musical and cultural energy of modern-day America. From repetitive ideas reminiscent of Steve Reich to walking bass lines straight from jazz, Circuits refracted important American musical styles of this century. Similarly, the kaleidoscope of melodies, musical "licks" and fragmented form aptly illustrated the electric, almost convulsive nature of American society near the start of the 21st century.
Charles Ward
The Houston Chronicle
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"Circuits" . . . packs enormous fun into less than five minutes of music. The idiom is approximately minimalist, but far from mechanistic - it's all urban exuberance, intricately detailed, full of surprising orchestral color and more than slightly wacky.
Mike Greenberg
The San Antonio Express-News
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The short, festive work was . . . as vital and seamless as electric current.
Wynne Delacoma
The Chicago Sun-Times
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Nat Bauer
The Rockford Register Star
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R. M. Campbell
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
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A modern piece that was just plain fun, Circuits got the night rolling.Abbie Dombrock
The River Cities' Reader
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Ashley Hassebroek
Omaha World-Herald
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PSALM 100
Melinda Bargreen
The Seattle Times
Mike Silverton
Fanfare Magazine
R. C. Morgan-White
Tallahassee Democrat
Robert Cummings
Computer Music Journal
Cindy McTee's "M" Music, for alto sax and tape, begins as an electroacoustic confection of sax-with-technology, engages between in some . . . entirely electronic introspections . . . , and ends, sax-with-technology, on an elegiac note. The stylistic range impresses, as does the composer's mastery of craft.
Mike Silverton
Fanfare Magazine
Another hot composer, Cindy McTee, struts her stuff with "M" Music. While the reliance on algorithmically-generated counterpoint is suitably fashionable, McTee long since demonstrated her uncommon mastery of this inherently unpromising medium. And her remarkably sinuous live saxophone writing . . . lifts this piece above the usual algorithmic ruck. As always for this superbly talented composer (check out her Metal Music), this composition is a winner.
Brian McClaren
Tuning Digest
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IMAGES
. . . clever in concept and very useful to include in a horn recital.
The Horn Call