by Kile Smith | Nov 18, 2010 | CD Reviews, Classical music, Music Criticism, My CD Reviews, WRTI
My latest CD mini-review for the WRTI E-newsletter. You can read all my CD reviews here. Bach, Mussorgsky, Wagner – the Stokowski Transcriptions José Serebrier, The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. Naxos 8.505086 CD 1: Wagner: Symphonic Syntheses by Stokowski. 8.570293...
by Kile Smith | Oct 28, 2010 | Classical music, Music Criticism, Pop Music
The Author Events director at the Free Library of Philadelphia asked me if I would introduce Alex Ross, who was coming here on Tuesday night, October 26th, to talk about his newest book, Listen to This. I was happy to accept, since I enjoyed introducing Ross and John...
by Kile Smith | Feb 15, 2010 | Classical music, Music Criticism
Catching up to Thousand Oaks, California, where their library chose The Soloist for last year’s One City, One Book celebration. Here’s a page where they list the descriptions I wrote up for the 46 musical works Steve Lopez mentions in the book, when the Free Library...
by Kile Smith | Jun 21, 2009 | CD Reviews, CDs, Music Criticism
New Made Old Vespers is almost preternaturally beautiful Peter Burwasser, Philadelphia City Paper, 2 Jun 2009 This Vespers is almost preternaturally beautiful, presented with an apparent simplicity that reveals the timeless essence of musical expression. But it is not...
by Kile Smith | Jun 16, 2009 | Choral music, Music Criticism, new music
Dave Allen, Hotbed of Intrigue, 10 Jun 2009 Kile Smith’s Where flames a word, the final world premiere in the Celan Project, and the first to incorporate a prose work by Celan. Gives a sense of immanence and of tremendous, overwhelming size and the struggle to...
by Kile Smith | May 24, 2009 | CD Reviews, CDs, Lutheran, Music Criticism
Comparing Vespers to a CD by another over-50 Lutheran composer, David Patrick Stearns makes me smile and go Hm at the same time, here, in the Philadelphia Inquirer. As usual, he invites me to think. Phil Kline’s John the Revelator is the other CD, and both come in for...