Two reviews of our Orange County Performing Arts Center performance of The Only Moving Thing have appeared, in the Los Angeles Times and Orange County Register.
Mark Swed wrote this positive review in the Los Angeles Times:
[T]he new [Reich] score … is the kind of explosion of fractured rhythms that never ceases to amaze the ear … A really good performance, then, feels like a barely controlled explosion between your ears. Tuesday’s was a really good, rocking, rollicking performance.
“singing in the dead of night” is a raucous, sad, scary, often disturbing conjuring-up of night images inspired by the Beatles’ “Blackbird.”
The blackbirds enjoy moving around the stage and seem willing to try just about anything. Collaborating with a significant theater artist, such as Marshall, is an important next step.
“The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds,” Stevens wrote. “It was a small part of the pantomime.” Not so small for these blackbirds, but they are six — and able to make themselves appear a much larger flock.
Paul Bodine wrote this mixed review in the Orange County Register:
No one who’s heard Reich’s previous works would be shocked by the rhetoric of Double Sextet, but its remorseless ascent in the closing bars – the bottom drops abruptly out, leaving the flute and clarinet playing exultantly on as if bursting free of gravity’s grip – is no less impressive …
Gordon’s Episode 1 offered both greater variety and sophistication and a welcome sense of humor, as cellist Nicholas Photino’s monotonously rock-flavored sawing made him the target of the other blackbirds’ efforts to steal his thunder.
Photos are from the LA Times (Lori Shepler) and Orange County Register (Armando Brown). You can see a slideshow from our Orange County show by clicking “more photos” on this page.
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