Martin
Wesley-Smith

chamber
music 		selected
press
clippings


e-mail Martin Wesley-Smith list of works back to chamber works


scores, parts, CDs etc are available from the The Australian Music Centre



db For Marimba
and Tape 		Oom
Pah Pah 		Pat-
a-Cake 		Snark-
Hunting 		White Knight
and Beaver

top about db bottom

Laurie Strachan, The Australian, Tues April 22 1997:
"... a welcome addition to the repertoire, Martin Wesley-Smith's db ... (it) proved a brilliant piece packed with allusions and quotations, all beautifully integrated into Wesley-Smith's elegant and often genuinely witty musical language."

Peter McCallum, The Sydney Morning Herald, Tues April 22 1997:
"A work we may well hear more of from the Australia Ensemble is Martin Wesley-Smith's db. During the 1980s, the Ensemble often used Carl Vine's Cafe Concertino on overseas trips as a lively example of both its own virtuosity and of the irreverently exuberant side of Australian music ... Wesley-Smith's db ... could well fulfil this role ... It struck me as one of his most successful essays in the sardonic use of popular styles: formally a little illogical although that was presumably the intention."

db For Marimba
and Tape 		Oom
Pah Pah 		Pat-
a-Cake 		Snark-
Hunting 		White Knight
and Beaver

top about For Marimba & Tape bottom

Andrew Porter, The New Yorker, June 4 1984:
In For Marimba & Tape (1982), by the Australian composer Martin Wesley-Smith, the tape sounds, created on Sydney's Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument), evoke a strange marimba world where instruments can skitter from side to side of the platform, glissade in chords, and sustain resonances without beating.

Bernard Holland, The New York Times, Sun May 27 1984
"... (I) was struck by how well the marimba's dark natural beauty blended with the electronically reproduced sounds in Martin Wesley-Smith's For Marimba & Tape."

John Henken, The Los Angeles Times, Wed Jan 26 1983:
"Martin Wesley-Smith's For Marimba & Tape is a tightly-meshed piece á la Davidovsky - coruscant rhythmic synchrony and clear motivic relationships comprehensively expressed."

Paul Griffiths, The Times, London, July 1988:
"Martin Wesley-Smith's For Marimba & Tape was exceedingly welcome for its imagination and humour."

Viitasaaren Seutu, Finland, July 28 1988:
"For most people, the highlight of the evening seemed to be Martin Wesley-Smith's For Marimba & Tape - a brilliant performance by percussionist Graeme Leak."

Robert Maycock, The Independent, London, July 18 1988:
"For Marimba & Tape, by Martin Wesley-Smith, maintains a spirit of intelligent inquiry ..."

db For Marimba
and Tape 		Oom
Pah Pah 		Pat-
a-Cake 		Snark-
Hunting 		White Knight
and Beaver

top about Oom Pah Pah bottom

Gordon Kerry, The Sydney Morning Herald, Jan 6 1997:
"The concert opened with the first performance of Martin Wesley-Smith's Oom Pah Pah. In this work, as its title hints, the composer contributes to a body of often satirical cabaret-style music for which he is renowned. In this short piece, Wesley-Smith cultivates a kind of sardonic Gallicism which he contrasts with passages of simple, evocative charm; it waltzes, grooves, slinks and meditates."

db For Marimba
and Tape 		Oom
Pah Pah 		Pat-
a-Cake 		Snark-
Hunting 		White Knight
and Beaver

top about Pat-a-Cake bottom

Patricia Brown, The Sydney Morning Herald, Thurs Dec 11 1980:
"... trombonist Simone De Haan often initiated bly rhythmical and triadic patterns which were in turn taken up and developed into a sparkling mosaic of sound by the two instruments."

Charles Ward, Houston Chronicle, Wed Jan 23 1985:
"In a handling of harmony reminiscent of Philip Glass, recorded music and soloist romped along with a minimum of musical ideas, mostly a triad unfolded in myriad ways ... It was a happy piece."

Julie Jensen, The Argus, Rock Island, Illinois, Sun Oct 21 1984:
"What he was doing musically was unfamiliar, amazing and as fascinating as a river of molten metal ..."

db For Marimba
and Tape 		Oom
Pah Pah 		Pat-
a-Cake 		Snark-
Hunting 		White Knight
and Beaver

top about Snark-Hunting bottom

Jarle Soraa, Verdens Gang, Oct 20 1991:
"'Jane's Minstrels' gave an overwhelming display of the British dominated program. The absolute highlight among these works was Martin Wesley-Smith's immensely witty Snark Hunting, with its magic sound texture."

Jill Sykes, The Sun-Herald, Dec 14 1986:
"Snark-Hunting is one of Martin Wesley-Smith's most successful ventures into the fantasies of Lewis Carroll and electronic-acoustic cross-pollination. It's a continuing delight and this performance was well-timed to coincide with the announcement on Thursday that this composer has, most deservedly, been awarded the 1987 Don Banks Fellowship."

Roger Covell, The Sydney Morning Herald, May 1 1984
"Snark-Hunting is whimsical, attractive and shrewdly timed and paced."

Martin Long, The Australian, May 1 1984:
"Martin Wesley-Smith's Snark-Hunting ... is a surreal mingling of avant-garde idiom with pop music of various eras, deftly interweaving live performance with taped sounds."

Jill Sykes, The Sun-Herald, May 6 1984:
"Snark-Hunting is amusing, enjoyable, provocative and well worth a second hearing."

Jill Sykes, The Sun-Herald, Sept 29 1985:
"... Martin Wesley-Smith's witty and amusing Snark-Hunting ... was the highlight of the concert."

John Henken, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles, May 18 1988:
"Martin Wesley-Smith's Snark-Hunting is a sort of deconstructed nursery rhyme medley both humorous and poignant."

Alan Rich, L. A. Herald Examiner, Los Angeles, May 18 1988:
"... the Wesley-Smith piece, as its title suggests, has some humorous razzle-dazzle here and there, and a nice circus parade at the end."

T H Naisby, The Newcastle Herald, Newcastle, NSW, Sept 7 1985:
"Martin Wesley-Smith is an adventurous composer. His Snark-Hunting (1984) was a veritable bower bird's nest of finds. Overlaying witty blends of sustained sounds and percussive effects were some very punning rhythms. Brand new treatments of old rhythmic clichés were attractively humorous indeed. Repetitions, à la Stevie Reich, were a subtle ingredient. At the heart of the work was Lewis Carroll's 'beamish nephew'."

Barbara Hebden, The Courier-Mail, Brisbane, Queensland, Aug 21 1990:
"Snark-Hunting, a jovial work that combines piano, cello, flute, percussion and tape, is obviously the work of an exceptional musical imagination."

db For Marimba
and Tape 		Oom
Pah Pah 		Pat-
a-Cake 		Snark-
Hunting 		White Knight
and Beaver

top about White Knight & Beaver bottom

Anne Marie Welsh, The San Diego Union, Sept 15 1986:
"(Miles Anderson) ignores the acerbic, academic intellectualism in so much contemporary music and just plays with its experimental impulse. The opening work, a comically absurdist dialogue between Anderson's trombone and (Erica) Sharp's jaunty fiddle set the tone for the evening. Its title (White Knight & Beaver by Martin Wesley-Smith) and its topsy-turvy theme come from 'Alice in Wonderland'."

Roger Covell, The Sydney Morning Herald, Jan 24 1989:
"... ingenious and rhythmically enlivening ..."

Fred Blanks, The Sydney Morning Herald, Dec 10 1985:
"Popular Christmas carols may not yet have been arranged for percussion groups, but something very like them danced like tonal snowflakes out of a Fairlight computer programmed, with lively marimba and xylophone, to produce a witty piece called White Knight by Martin Wesley-Smith, who may have used a fairground merry-go-round with a few screws loose as his model."


e-mail Martin Wesley-Smith list of works discography
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