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Fanfare
2013
Review
of Dedications by PRISM Saxophone Quartet (review of Howler Back)
Walter
Simmons
As
John Schaefer notes in a short accompanying essay, the PRISM Quartet seems to
have modeled itself after the Kronos String Quartet, with its focus on
commissioning new works, its embrace of a stylistic range that extends from
traditional approaches to experimental explorations of many different kinds,
but, most of all, with its truly astonishing precision of technical execution,
coordination of ensemble, and subtlety of expression. Dedication features
music by 23 living composers, in pieces that average less than two minutes
each.
But
three pieces stand out as stunning, memorable, and immensely enjoyable: They
are Zack Browning’s Howler Back, Jennifer Higdon’s Bop, and,
perhaps most of all, Perry Goldstein’s Out of Bounds. But I must
emphasize that many, if not most, of the pieces pose extraordinary difficulties
in execution—e.g., playing microtonally, coordinating precise uniformity of
articulation—and the quartet’s success in meeting these challenges is
breathtaking.
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Kathodik
May
12, 2012
Review
of CD Secret Pusle
By
Filippo Focosi
Second
test of a composer always agguerritissima (unyielding, passionate,
enthusiastic) Zack Browning for Innova,
as convincing as, if not more, than the first. Then show yourself the features
already intact: a constructivism explicitly, even the author says, that
dissolves in the choice of materials submitted to the geometric ars
combinatorial author. In fact, Browning draws liberally from rock, funk, jazz,
which returns all the rhythmic energy and melodic freshness and here, for
example, cites the unforgettable Moondance by Van Morrison, less known and
popular subjects. All this results in a post-minimalism that does not run the
risk of being repetitive, although a certain uniformity of atmosphere
characterizes the 5 pieces presented, which is the strong presence of
percussion. But it is still a buzzing atmosphere, which encourages others to
listen to this interesting composer.
Perspectives
on Sound
April
29, 2012
Review
of CD Secret Pulse
By
Neo Antennae
Browning, a composer accurately
described as "way-cool," likes squares. So much, in fact, that the
five pieces on this album are based on varying squares in the universe (the 5x5
Magic Square of Mars, the 9x9 Magic Square of the Moon, and the 3x3 Lo Shu
Square). This album is perfectly varied, perfectly represented by top notch
ensembles, and perfectly presented. When you hold it, it just feels right as
a collection of music. The title track is like an energetic, genre-crossing
ensemble mixed with a 9bit video game and a trailer for a Transformers movie.
It's wonderful.
Gapplegate Classical-Modern Music Review
March
27, 2012
Review
of CD Secret Pulse
By
Grego Applegate Edwards
In our digital age we are increasingly
exposed to "rapid-cut" visual editing in music videos,
advertisements, television shows and movies. Perhaps music videos have most
perfected the art as a constant. As the music plays, you get montages in rapid
succession: singer close up, singer with other dancers, singer in another
setting, and so forth in a constant flow of short-lived images and their
momentary return.
I remember that the Smothers Brothers TV show in the late sixties, if I am not mistaken,
in a popular segment played the song "Classical Gas" and showed an
ultra-rapid series of topical photographic images with rapid cuts following
rapid cuts. By then it was an established technique in avant-age
cinematography. A prominent contemporary example: the beginning of the sitcom
"The Big Bang" shows in a lightening fast series of cuts visuals
representing the time from the Big Bang through to the present, stopping with
the main characters at home in their apartment.
We are truly in the age of the rapid cut. But it is on the music video
especially today where you see cuts that both unfold rapidly and also return to
particular shots as the music unfolds.
As if to represent that in purely musical form, Zack Browning in his Secret
Pulse (Innova 817) gives us a chamber music that partakes of minimalizt
recurrence but alters the mesmerizing trance inducement of sameness by cutting
rapidly from contrasting section to contrasting section. No doubt it is a
difficult music to play effectively in an ensemble, since every musician must
be continually aware of the need to move from short section to short section in
ways that give the series of cuts an a-to-b continuity, to construct a
conversational syntax smoothly delivered, as it were. They do that and very
well too on the CD at hand.
In all there are five works presented on the disk, in varied instrumental
combinations: the flute, viola and piano trio in "Hakka Fusion"
(2009); flute, cello, violin and electronics in "Secret Pulse"
(2004); a String Quartet (2008); a percussion ensemble in "Flying
Tones" (2010); and a chamber ensemble in "Moon Thrust" (2009).
All the music demonstrates well Zack Browning's minimal-and-cut approach. It is
more a somewhat overwrought excitement that is generated in the music than a
linear-logical narrative horizontality. It is a music of our time, where the
internet, cell phones and any manner of other media occur with their constant
cuts along with our multi-tasking tours of daily duty in work and leisure. All
that would be superfluous if the music did not convince as music. It
does.
The performers do an excellent job putting the sense into the disparate parts,
bringing out the composer's long-form musical structure for the assemblage of
recurrences and quickly contrasting new "occurrency." If Morton
Feldman's later music felt like a leisurely scan of the patterns of a Persian
rug, Zack Browning's music is like a rapid traversal of landscape changes in a
low-flying jet.
The results make for fascinating listening.
It’s All About The Music Listen Up
KJJC 89.7 FM (Los Altos Hills,
CA)
March 5, 2012
Review of CD Secret Pulse
By Humana
Who
knew squares could be so magical in compositions? Zack Browning certainly did,
and in this CD he uses the 5X5 Magic Square of Mars, the 9X9 Magic Square of
the Moon, and the ancient Chinese 3X3 Lo Shu Square to show how freely
compositions can roam within structure. The Cadillac Moon Ensemble performs 1
and 5 (5 has elements of Van Morrison’s Moon Dance mixed in); Ensemble Unity
masters 1; Jack Quartet ably executes 3; and the University of Central Florida
Percussion Ensemble delights on 4 (mallets, yes!). Each group nimbly brings to
life the jaunty, perky energy characteristic of this composer of “speed-demon
music.” Let the classical/experimental goodness get your pulse jumping!
Sonorities
Winter 2012
Born to Run… (review of CD Venus
Notorious) pp. 37-38
By John Wagstaff
This technique [magic squares] tends
to produce compositions that are multi-sectional, full of variety, and pique
the intellect and the ear. Or to put it another way, rather like a meal with
many different courses, the pieces move from one textual or rhythmic “flavor”
to another. This makes them highly accessible, and, if you are a person who
thinks you do not like “modern music,” this CD might well change your mind.
American Record Guide
July / August 2012
Review of CD Secret Pulse
Zack
Browning's compositions are infectious. Rhythm shifts in Hakka Fusion
between triple and duple time and between pulsating sections driven by the
violin and piano and more subdued, melodic sections using the flute. Secret
Pulse adds cello and electronics to the ensemble. The jubilant flute and
violin are pitted against the walking cello and the beeps and distorted tones
of the electronics. Most of the digital sound contains a rough aspect like the
revving of a race car. Flying Tones takes the rotating material approach
to composition and applies it to a percussion ensemble. Beginning just with
cymbals, the ensemble grows to keyboard percussion and timpani. Browning makes
consistent use of rotating rhythms and material while using tonal material. The
different timbres and contrapuntal language keep the ears fresh.
No-trivia.com
January
2012 Picks
Review
of CD Secret Pulse
Zack Browning, Secret Pulse: Fancy pants
modern classical pick. Imagine the sunny, unpretentious American avant-garde
laced with art-damaged Atari blips. One or two more sounds and this would scan
as “cool,” one or two less and it’d score a Fincher flick.
For this one, the review is already there. The heading needs to be changed because now
it is under Prismatic Spray. New Haven
Advocate should be first and then correct the rest of the heading. Review is
fine.
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Sequenza
21/The Contemporary Classical Music Community
October
3, 2011
CD
Review: PRISM Quartet Dedication CD on Innova Records (review of Howler Back)
By
Jay Batzner
I
don’t think there are enough words to describe the technical precision, the
unity of sonic intent, the musicality, and the timbral facility present in the
Prism Quartet’s playing. Fortunately for me, I don’t really need the words; I
have this disc instead. These 23 compositions, all short and wonderfully
focused, paint a wonderful aural picture of this amazing sax quartet. The
slithering of Roshanne Etezady’s Inkling showcases the extreme fluidity
of their sound and as soon as it is over – BAM – we are hit with the spiky and
strident Howler Black by Zack Browning.
Nuvo
– Indy’s Alternative Voice
January
19, 2011
Review
: Davis Brooks, “Violin and Electronics” (review of Sole Injection for violin
and computer-generated sounds)
By
Scott Shoger
I'll
give you a trippy image to illustrate Zack Browning's "Sole Injection for
violin and computer-generated sounds": a bullet train, its wheels replaced
by "Simon" games, which randomly and rhythmically light up and beep
as the train inches along, away from the station and into (let's say)
Candyland. And I'll share an inspiration: Browning reports in the liner notes
that he based the piece on MC Hammer's "Adams Groove," which you may
recall as the rapper's contribution to The Adams Family soundtrack. I
can think of no worse place to start a song, excepting perhaps Vanilla Ice's
"Ninja Rap" from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of
the Ooze, but the song is lost in translation, providing only raw material
for Browning's magic square composition techniques, which end up supplying a
circular, propulsive, bright electronic background for Brooks' violin.
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San Jose Mercury News
December 31, 2010
Scheinin: Top classical CDs of 2010
(review of Funk Assault)
By Richard Scheinin
PRISM Quartet: "Breath
Beneath" (New Dynamic). Classical saxophone performance has long roots in
France, where the instrument has been played with salon-like refinement and
fragrance. It's safe to say that the 25 year-old PRISM Quartet represents the
flowering of an American school of classical saxophone performance. The group
plays with the balance and precision of a fine string quartet, but the colors
and textures are like nothing you've ever heard. The compositions here range
from Zack Browning's "Funk Assault" to Kati Agocs's
"Coloratura." The titles say a lot about this amazing band's
versatility.
Kathodik
December 24, 2010
Review
of CD Venus Notorious
by
Filippo Focosi
Zack Browning's music is to all intents
and purposes, post-minimalist. Repetition plays a central role in all his
compositions, in which melodic and rhythmic cells, full of swing and the wall
immediately, develop gradually and mechanically from an initial set. Still,
Browning prevents the flow gradually take control and mechanical, dragging the
hypnotic flow of the typical historical minimalism. Before that happens, in
fact, the composer intervenes by cutting, overlapping and mending the musical material
used, through a dense interplay of joints, mirrors and refractions. The
infectious energy, clearly inspired by pop and rock that flows from all of his
compositions, in which a leading role is played by the percussion, there is no
risk to disperse, as is deftly channeled by the composer in inaccessible paths,
branched, but that ultimately lead us to the light.
AllMusic
December
2010
Review
of CD Venus Notorious
by
Stephen Eddins
Zack Browning, associate professor
emeritus at the University of Illinois, frequently mixes acoustic instruments
and electronics, but this album consists entirely of acoustic works for a
variety of forces ranging in size from solo piano to percussion ensemble with
flute. Five of the pieces are from 2006 and 2007 and were written using
"planetary magic squares, ancient Chinese magic squares and feng
shui" to determine the musical structure. Extra-musical devices like these
are essentially neutral, and they don't guarantee a musical outcome that
delights and intrigues any more than the use of a system like serialism. Browning, though, clearly has a knack for
creating fascinating, dynamic, and often beautiful material, so that when it is
run through the processes of the magic squares, the results really are
wonderfully delightful and intriguing. The music is for the most part
hyperkinetic, quirkily hurtling forward, with startling, unpredictable
juxtapositions whose oddness is almost guaranteed to make the listener smile.
Browning's tonality is related to the minimalism of a composer like Steve
Reich, and his recycling of small cells also gives his music a link to
minimalism, but the resemblance stops there, because where in minimalism change
is slow and incremental, in his music change is almost incessant, with new
musical ideas breaking in with breathless unpredictability. Each of the pieces
is fully successful, but Venus Notorious, scored for the eccentric ensemble of
two pianos, xylophone, and drum set, is particularly striking because of the
attractiveness of its largely tonal melodic material, its fun, fragmented
rhythms, and its timbral variety. The two-movement Thunder Roll from 1975 has
been one of Browning's most frequently performed pieces and it's not hard to
see why. Scored for piano, two percussionists, and timpani, each movement is a
slowly unfolding, colorful, and atmospheric evocation of a storm. The music
receives exemplary performances from a wide variety of instrumentalists, mostly
faculty members at leading music schools. The sound is clean and exceptionally
crisp, just what the music requires.
Audiophile
Audition
October
7, 2010
Review
of CD Venus Notorious (Two CDs featuring percussion, lots of
percussion: one offers real listening pleasure, one not so much)
By
Lee Passarella
It may not be hi-res, but Venus Notorious
will certainly put your system to the test. It’s stereo to the max, and that
bass drum in Profit Beater and Thunder Roll shook everything in
my listening room that wasn’t nailed down. As a matter of fact, the two Thunder
Roll pieces are my favorite earfuls on this disc. Written in 1975, more
than thirty years before the other works on the program, they represent a
different aesthetic entirely, one that seems influenced by the driving rhythms
and off-rhythms of Bartók and his groupies. Zack Browning, emeritus professor
of music at the University of Illinois, would probably say these pieces
represent a time in his career before he found his true musical voice. That
voice—conveyed in pieces like Venus Notorious—is, according to the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, “way-cool in attitude.” Call me way-uncool, but to me
they don’t have a hell of a lot to say.
Browning explains that “Since 1995, I have written several works that belong to
an original series of experimental music compositions that incorporate planetary
magic squares, ancient Chinese magic squares and feng shui as compositional
models. A magic square consists of a series of numbers arranged so that the sum
of each row, column, and diagonal is the same amount. Routes through the square
are mapped onto a musical structure that uses the properties of the square as a
compositional model.”
Sounds profound, doesn’t it? But the music itself sounds like a Steve Reich
record stuck on a single three- or four-note riff that keeps repeating and
repeating ad infinitum (or at least for ten or fifteen minutes, which is about
as long as Browning’s pieces last). Some of it sounds like a Jacques Louissier
Trio record stuck on a single three- or four-note riff that keeps. . . . Well,
you get the idea. If, as The Irish Times states, Zack Browning brings
“together the procedures of high musical art with the taste of popular
culture,” then I guess I don’t know high musical art from a Chinese magic
square. And don’t want to. [I once got a record store to take back an early
Philip Glass LP, saying it stuck...It didn’t...Ed.]
Computer
Music Journal
Volume
34, Number 3, Fall 2010
Review
of CD Cigar Smoke by Esther Lamneck (review of Crack Hammer)
By
Pauline Minevich Regina
Esther
Lamneck: Cigar Smoke. Compact disc, 2007, innova Recordings 673;
The
final work on the CD is Crack Hammer (2004) by Zack Browning. Browning
explains that the piece is one of a series in which he explores the application
of magic squares to musical structure. A magic square is a series of numbers
arranged in a square, so that the sum of each row, column and diagonal is the
same. In Von Nettesheims’s De Occulta Philosophia (1531), seven magic
squares are associated with the seven bodies of the Ptolemaic universe (Saturn,
Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Venus, Mercury, and the Moon). Mr. Browning used the
magic square of Mars to structure this piece. Each number’s unique position in
the square is mirrored in the score by a specific style, rhythm, density,
timbre, and orchestration. The resulting work is, perhaps surprisingly, jazzy,
with interesting rhythmic patterns, and a sense of playfulness.
All
Music Guide
August
31, 2010
Review
of CD Venus Notorious
By
François Couture
Wow, a very percussive contemporary
music record - with or without percussion! Browning, an American composer,
delivers here five recent works (2006/2007) plus one dating back to 1975. His
music is complex, rhythm-centric, and driving. It’s easy to forget that it is
mostly based on magic squares. I must mention “Profit Beater” (12 minutes) for
flute and percussion, featuring the McCormick Percussion Ensemble (who recently
released a CD on one of Parma’s sub-labels), and “Venus Notorious” (15 minutes)
for two pianos, xylophone, and drum kit. This music is complex though not
overdone, with a je-ne-sais-quoi that makes it very accessible. Highly recommended,
especially to RIO fans.
San Francisco Chronicle
August
29, 2010
Review:
CD review of Venus Notorious by
Zack Browning
Author:
Joshua Kosman
The
seven chamber works by composer Zack
Browning on this disc are built around
some kind of constructive process involving
magic squares, feng shui and the movement
of the planets. The details hardly matter,
and in fact any halfway savvy listener
will be able to detect the presence
of a system just from the repetitions
and variations that infuse the music.
What counts, rather, is the surface
play of the music, which is charming,
ebullient, infectiously bright and also
somewhat limited in scope. Browning's
music is densely but unpredictably patterned,
built around tiny rhythmic and melodic
cells that repeat, join, scatter and
stutter according to whatever rules
are in place behind the scenes, and
because Browning's rhythmic palette
is so bouncy and exuberant - some of
the music sounds like dance tracks for
androids with varying numbers of feet
- it has a seductive sort of grace.
But there's also a digital feel to the
music that is underscored by the predominance
of piano and percussion; a little more
textural variety and even sensuality
would have been welcome.
Step
Tempest
May
4, 2010
Review
of CD Breath Beneath by PRISM Saxophone Quartet (review of Funk Assault)
Richard
B. Kamins
Breath Beneath (New Dynamic Records) -
This release, from the label of Indiana University Southeast, finds the Quartet
playing new music by North American composers.
These pieces range from the James Brown-meets-the World Saxophone
Quartet excitement of Zack Browning's "Funk Assault" to the
lamentations of Roshanne Etezady's "Keen" to the constant hum and
whisper of the title track, written by Kristin Kuster.
The
New York Times
March
4, 2010
Review:
At Ease in T-Shirts or Suits, and With the Medieval or Modern (review of JACK
Quartet concert at Merkin Hall, NYC on 03/03/10)
Author:
Anthony Tommasini
Zack Browning’s 2008 String Quartet provided
just what was needed to end the program: a propulsive, giddy, rocking piece, a
rush of cyclic riffs and fractured meters. Was it just the context the JACK
Quartet provided, or did the strange, cchorale-like harmonies in the piece recall
Machaut?
The
Birmingham News
March
12, 2010
Review:
Karen Bentley Pollick: Virtuosity of the avant garde (review of concert
Alternating Currents by Karen Bentley Pollick, violin at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham,
AL on 03/11/10)
Author:
Michael Huebner
Zack
Browning used highly-charged sound masses in broad swashes to bring "Sole
Injection" to an intense conclusion.
The
Big City
February
26, 2010
Four
Brothers: Review of CD Breath Beneath by PRISM Saxophone Quartet (review of
Funk Assault)
By
Gandalfe
Zack Browning’s Funk Assault is revealed
by the composer to have been structured around a Magic Square, but the ears
don’t need to know that to enjoy the sharp attacks of the short, driving
phrases and the expansive intervals. It’s a nice balance of the intellectual
and the hip.
New Haven Advocate
Prismatic Spray (Review of FunkAssault on CD Breath Beneath by PRISM Saxophone Quartet)
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Daniel Stephen Johnson
There is an otherwise great track
here, Zack Browning's FUNK ASSAULT, that highlights the group's one weakness—I kept
wishing they could attack each note with more bite. It could have been so much
funkier, and more assaultive, if they were as great at suddenly stabbing out of
nowhere as they are at gradually fading in and out of nothing. Which, I don't
think I mentioned, they do incredibly well.
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Leonardo
On-Line (Leonardo Music Journal)
Review
of CD Cigar Smoke by Esther Lamneck (Review of Crack Hammer)
September
2008
Reviewed
by Michael R. (Mike) Mosher
Saginaw
Valley State University, Michigan
Beyond its contemporary gritty title,
"Crack Hammer" makes use of Ptolemaic magic squares in its
composition, those symmetrical mathematical devices Browning found in Heinrich
Cornelius Agrippa Von Nettersheim's 1531 book De Occulta Philosophica. In our
own century, with the addition of Esther Lamneck's subtle clarinet, they add up
to satisfying electro-acoustic music.
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Music of Our Time
August 29, 2007
Review: Esther Lamneck CD Review
Author: Dary John Mizelle
Zack Browning’s Crack Hammer for clarinet and computer-generated sounds provides a
welcome sense of fun and humor in an otherwise very serious CD. The composer
employs repetitive, additive rhythms with an unpredictable sense of humor. The
form and rhythm of this piece were based on a magic square. Ms. Lamneck’s
impeccable sense of timing makes the performance very exhilarating
All Music
July 2007
Review: Funktasia: Music by Zack Browning
and Sever Tipei
Author: James Manheim
The title of the CD “Funktasia” is more
applicable to the music of Zack Browning, which mixes select references to the
language of popular music with structures derived from abstruse formal devices
like magic squares. His zippy music is made up of short, punchy blasts that are
accented by sharp but subtle contrasts of texture between instruments, often
between an electronic and an acoustic sound. In the opening Pure Sweat, for example, a bass clarinet
veers off from buzzy electronic sounds. The use of the electric guitar in Coming Up Sevens (1987) is notable; it
is one of a fairly small group of modern compositions that uses instruments
from the popular world but divorces them from its stylistic references — and
plays with the results in interesting ways.
Georgia Straight
February 22, 2007
Review: Standing Wave Concert in Vancouver
Author: Alex Varty
The program featured attractive works
from Horn by Island guitarist Tony Wilson and English iconoclast Thomas Ades, but the
ensemble stared down bigger challenges in Zack Browning's Impact Addiction
and Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez’s Luciernagas. The former is mathematical and exceedingly
complex. Browning also asks the musicians to perform at a hyperspeed
pace, which renders that complexity difficult to grasp on first hearing.
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San Antonio Express-News
September 17, 2006
Review: Concerts highlight composers, innovations
Author: Mike Greenberg, EXPRESS-NEWS SENIOR CRITIC
Zack Browning's "Network Slammer," which uses the numerical magic square as a
compositional model, showed that process-oriented music, a frequently dour obsession
of the 1970s, can be great fun. The live flutist (Chih-hsien Chien) spun intricate melodic
lines against a banging computer part that alternated between a cockeyed robotic dance
and more rhythmically supple and energetic material. The four-channel electronic sounds
brought to mind the beloved Hammond B3, and they filled the space richly.
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The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
February
17, 2005
Review: New music rises from 'Red Clay'
Author: Pierre Ruhe - Staff
With a growing national reputation,
Browning was heard locally a year ago, when New York's Bang on
a Can ensemble, on tour, played some of his speed-demon music. Tuesday's
nine-minute premiere, "Secret Pulse," starts with taped sounds of
blurry, stroboscopic electronica, augmented by live flute, cello and violin.
It's way-cool in attitude, racing at top velocity, pausing only occasionally
for a lyrical cello melody or pointillistic violin fragment. There's anxiety in
its fast-faster-faster sensory overload, which stirred feelings of
helplessness. It felt like a bleak commentary on our depersonalized,
electro-computer society, where an individual's ideas are swept aside by the
information-age tsunami. And it was kinda fun.
The Computer Music Journal
Volume 29 Issue 4
Review: 14th Florida Electroacoustic Music
Festival 2005
Secret
Pulse by Zack Browning had the drive I’ve always
loved from parts of the Béla Bartók quartets. They make music that crests like
a wave. Then, clarinetist Esther Lamneck returned to perform Zack Browning's Crack Hammer, a crackerjack combo of
computer and clarinetist: it was a fight to the finish, both contestants making
me cheer!
St. Petersburg Times
April
2, 2005
Review: Bonk Festival opens with
mild-mannered note
Author: John Fleming, Times Peforming art
Critic
And give Zack Browning's propulsive
Flaming Walls the prize for best inspiration, with the "Magic Square of
Mars"
providing its framework, according to a program note. Holt laid down expert
support for the exciting, jagged rhythms.
Fanfare
June/July 2004
Review:
Review of CD “Inner Visions” Sherban Lupu, violin
Author: Robert Carl
Zack
Browning's Double Shot (2000) is an engaging moto perpetuo
based, according to the composer, on material derived from magic squares.
There's no way of knowing how this source relates specifically to the music,
but it's just as well, because the energy and momentum of the piece are
infectious on their own and, if nothing else, it's obvious the source gives a
level of cohesion to the product.
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The Berkshire Eagle
July
20, 2004. Copyright
Review: Bang On A Can All-Stars
Author: Seth Rogovoy
The concert kicked off with composer Zack
Browning’s “Back Speed Double Circuit,” which according to the program notes is
a mathematics-based piece that has something to do with magic squares and the
planet Mars. Indeed, at times it sounded like an extraterrestrial “Rhapsody in
Blue,” its proportions bent or altered as if by a powerful gravitational or
magnetic force. The musicians played in response to computer-generated sounds
that at times evoked a harpsichord, and mostly in stop-start fashion. With a
clear, rhythmic pulse emerging, the overall piece began to take shape and an
overriding architecture emerged wherein the seemingly jagged, unrelated bursts
of clarinet, drums, bass, piano and guitar revealed a greater, almost
harmonious relationship.
Gaudeaumus week
September 2004
Review: Musical Pointers
Authors: Peter Grahame Woolf andf Alexa Woolf
……….. - that in contrast to Zack Browning's absorbingly entertaining Network
Slammer for flute (Susan Doyle) and tape. Zack's piece is direct and clear
on first acquaintance, but one to hear again and again for the sheer pleasure
of familiarity; based on The Magic Square of Venus (Agrippa), but
nothing like Maxwell Davies - an electroacoustic work to wake up and delight
the audience for any type of concert.
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Arts Ireland
October 2003, Issue No. 68
Review: The Crash Ensemble
Author: Miriam Stewart
Although some of Dennehy's own pieces written for the Ensemble were
interesting, the
real highlights of this show were the American pieces, composed by Philip Glass
and Zack Browning among others; pieces whose sparse technical tricks were given
full, controlled rein. A feast for the ears and mind. More performances please!
American Record Guide
November/December 2002
Review: The Newest Music (Review of CD
Banjaxed)
Author: Payton MacDonald
When not composing music Zack Browning
teaches at the University of Illinois. Several of the cuts on Banjaxed use the magic square as a
structural device. The magic square is a
grid of numbers that all add up to the same sum, whether one adds the rows, the
columns, or the diagonal lines. You
can’t hear this, of course, but I suppose it helped Browning organize his
musical thoughts. All of the tracks are
electro-acoustic. The acoustic
instruments include trumpet, violin, alto saxophone, flute, and mixed
ensemble. Browning combines pop and
classical ideas. I complained in the
last issue that this rarely works, but Browning seems to have pulled it off. Each piece has the thematic consistency of a
pop tune. They are all instantly
identifiable, with the same production polish and narrow dynamic range as most
pop records. Browning blends all of this with the creative and structural
sophistication of classical music. One
of the best pieces is the first one, Breakpoint
Screamer. It is an apt title for this
edgy, but cool work. The musicians
breathe fire like a dragon, singeing but never burning. I also enjoyed the title track, which might
be the aural equivalent of the pinball machine.
Imagine sassy, brilliant bumpers with each slam of the ball sending a
glitter of lights and mechanical twitters through your chest. Electro-acoustic aficionados should
definitely check this out.
American
Music Center
NewMusicBox
Review: Banjaxed CD, Capstone Records 8697
Browning's hyperactive, mathematical
compositions unite live performance with edgy electronics (primarily tape
parts), incorporating truncated, punchy rhythms that do not allow rest. Abrupt
changes in sonority often break down into dialogues between the live musicians
and the tape parts and often dissolve into a very ordered cacophony.
Occasionally, Browning teases us with a traditional melody line but no sooner
do you get used to it and he's off and running with a new idea.
2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003-2002 | 2000 | 1998 | 1996
The Computer Music Journal
Volume 24 No. 4, Composition and
Performance – Winter 2000
Review: Zack Browning and Eun-Bae Kim:
Diversity in Music
Author: Nico Schuler
Breakpoint Screamer by the University of Illinois professor of composition and music theory, Zack Browning, was
commissioned by the International Trumpet Guild (ITG) for performance at the
1994 ITG conference at the University of Illinois. Several layers of pulse-oriented patterns bring trumpets and tape
together in a unique and fresh way, creating an energy-carrying dramaturgy that
culminates towards the end of the 7-minute piece. Each pattern, with a distinct
rhythmic and melodic appearance, may change its global position so that not
only different patterns get together at different times in the composition, but
also with a different local position to each other. Thus, different polyrhythms
are constantly created. As the listener learns from the CD cover, the tape used
in this piece was produced with GACSS (Genetic Algorithms in Composition and
Sound Synthesis), a software package developed by the Illinois composer,
artist, and multi-media specialist Benjamin Grosser. With GACSS, sound
synthesis and compositional parameters are controlled by genetic algorithms.
The timbres generated by the program are classified with regard to their
waveform, called breakpoints. Breakpoints specifically represent the number of
peaks and the distance between those peaks. The composition Breakpoint
Screamer represents an excellent result of this concept, especially
considering the combination of instrumental timbres with computer-generated ones
and the "dialogue" between trumpets and tape. But most of all, the
large-scale concept works: the piece is fascinating up to the last second. That
the performance requires five trumpet players instead of two (or three) for
such a light texture is another question, but the final, audible result is what
counts.
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The Irish Times
September
16, 1998
Review: The Crash Ensemble Project @ The
Mint
Author: Michael Dervan
Crash’s advocacy of the racy energy of
Illinois-based Zack Browning continued with a repeat of Impact Addiction for violin, keyboard, drum kit and tape, and the
premiere of Network Slammer for flute
and tape. Unlike most composers working within the electroacoustic field,
Browning uses computer synthesis to mimic a super-charged mechanical or gan
with an almost old-fashioned artificiality of timbre, and he produces music
which conveys a heady, almost giggly exhilaration.
The Irish Times
March
17, 1998
Review: Looking after the new, the second
UCC Festival of Contemporary Music
Author: Michael Dervan
The festival featured three visiting
composers, 45 year-old Zack Browning was represented by Impact Addiction and Sole
Injection, two works for live performers and tape, both highly energized
pieces which represent the musicians, guided by click tracks, almost as
pseudo-electronic puppets, and bringing together the procedures of high musical
art with the taste of popular culture.
These were the most impressive performances in the Crash Ensemble’s full
evening concert.
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ThingReviews
Bang On ACan Marathon
Alice Tully Hall, NYC (June 2, 1996)
June 11, 1996
Review of
Breakpoint Screamer
By KennethGoldsmith
Zack
Browning "Breakpoint Screamer" Performed by Ensemble Screamer. This could have been the
sleeper of the day--it certainly ranked amongst my faves. 5 trumpets and
electronics belting out very tight horn charts. As the electronics got faster,
the players responded (or maybe it was the other way around) until things got
so sonically overworked that they were about to explode. Very BOAC fare, that
succeeds in just the way that BOAC aspires to: rhythm, volume, intensity and
rock and roll. This one left our heads spinning and our ears dazzled.
The New York Times
June
4, 1996
Review: Impish Noisemakers Revel In Sounds
of the Century
Author: Anthony Tommasini
There were many engaging and fresh sounds.
Zack Browning's "Breakpoint Screamer" for five trumpets and
computer-generated tape made a lot of wonderfully shimmering noise, but nothing
really happened.
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