Thomas Goss - Recent
Press Quotes
| CANINE
MAYHEM IN SYMPHONY HALL | "Bad
dog! Bad dog! No, no, NO!" It's an opener to a piece that must have a certain resonance for the dog-owners in the San Francisco Symphony's audience. Thomas Goss's The Seven Deadly Sins (of a dog) got its premiere on Sunday afternoon by the San Francisco Symphony Chamber Players at Davies Symphony Hall. It's for four horns (doubling Wagner tubas - "super-macho horns," as the composer explained on Sunday) and tuba, and it portrays the Bad Dog in, shall we say, loving detail. I don't think I've had so much fun in Davies Symphony Hall in a long time. The "Bad dog!" Leitmotif (an alternating minor tenth, with an emphatic "no, no, no!" at the end) is everywhere, but there are also the cat (the cat's motif from Peter & the Wolf, only faster and in counterpoint), and the poor postman ("Please Mister Postman" - in the tuba, yet!). That is just in the first of the "Deadly Sins": "Chasing the Cat (and biting a stray postman)"; after come such other sins as "Getting into the Trash" (realistically rendered with actual soup cans, kicked over by a hornist), "Barking All Night" (in a 7/4 meter that the composer implausibly suggested he'd extracted from actual observation of barking dogs), "Chewing on an Old Shoe" (a delightful cakewalk that should find a wider following), "Sleeping On the Furniture" (harrowingly realistic dog snoring noises), and more. Goss's great galumphing Rottweiler of a piece (he said his Muse was a Gordon Setter, but in all honesty it sounded a bit bigger-boned than that) left the rest of the program looking just a bit wan. I was reminded of PDQ Bach's Echo Sonata, where a big, nasty brass quintet sabotages a nice, harmless woodwind quintet's recital, though in this case there was clearly no malice intended. | |
| San
Francisco Classical Voice Jan. 22, 2002 By Michelle Dulak | ||
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SAN
FRANCISCO | For
full-bore contrast [to Schumann's Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 44], the
concert also presented the premiere of Thomas Goss' "The Seven Deadly Sins
(of a dog)," scored for French horn, tuba and four Wagner tubas, those contraptions
that resemble horns with thyroid conditions. Goss, who is active in local new-music
and dance circles, hosted a droll introduction and exhibited a blown-up photograph
of "my muse" (a Gordon setter named Fletcher). Props included a red
fire hydrant and a soup can, which contributed its own tinny obbligato. Calling this piece a dog turns out, for once, to be a compliment. In his survey of canine peccadilloes, Goss has incorporated barking patterns of man's best friend, as well as a quotation from "Peter and the Wolf." He also laid traps for his dauntless brass consort, whose members -- Jonathan Ring, Bruce Roberts, Robert Ward, Kimberly Wright and Peter Warhaftig -- dispatched their witty, if slightly protracted assignments, with brazen glory. - Recent Press Quotes (cont.) | |
| S.F.
Chronicle Jan. 22, 2002 by Allan Ulrich, Chronicle Music Critic | ||
2000
BROWN | "Broken
Glass," a lyrical piece by Thomas Goss, was beautifully performed by violinist
Stephanie Krejcarek (class of '00.5) and guitarist Nathan Stumpff (class of '02).
Goss explained that the piece portrayed the "emotional details about the
end of a romance," which had autobiographical aspects, and was partly made
up of artistic impulses. The piece was written in only three days and performed
for the first time at Brown two months later. Even though Goss wrote the piece for a guitar virtuoso, he said he was pleased with Stumpff's performance. Audience members received the piece with enthusiasm. Goss traveled from California in order to work with Brown students through connections with Elaine Bearer, an associate professor of biology at Brown. Bearer, Goss, and Michael had been part of a composer's group called the New Release Alliance, which recently disbanded. | |
| Brown
Herald, Providence, Rhode Island by Shana Jalbert | ||
COMPOSERS
INC. | "A fistful of broken light.." by Thomas Goss, suggested harshness, but gave (the audience) sublime peace. Mr. Goss contributed a brief poem in the program to explain himself ("Sing through me the prayer of the girl With sunset in her hair And a fistful of broken light"). The wonderful Onyx Quartet, joined by Linda Ghidossi-DeLuca playing the viola, wooed its listeners with hymn-like textures, mildly dissonant chords that brought to mind Beethoven had he lived a bit longer, or Brahms in a somber slow-movement mood. It was slow, homophonic and breathed a lot; short phrases seem to float in half-sleep through empty rooms with the windows wide open. The effect was moving and totally convincing. | |
| San
Francisco Classical Voice Oct. 20, 1998 by Marvin Tartak |
STRINGS
& BOWS | Graver
but as arresting were four selections from "Ocean Beach," with a libretto
that showed the composer Thomas Goss as a reverse Samuel Beckett (the Irish dramatist
often wrote in French and then translated back into English). Despite the fact
that the American Goss began by thinking in his mother tongue, the settings were
extremely French in style, even during Amat's rapturous and splendid vocalise
sections. The music was mature and melodic, with a hint of something quintessentially
West Coast glimmering through in a way that curiously called forth Harry Partch's
francophile leanings. Goss's sparkling writing allowed Amat to become a chanteuse --sensual, sexy, and sumptuous (the singer surprisingly and brusquely shaking a maraca at one point, totally effective and totally out of the blue) as a postminimal-pop Carmen -- and then redefining herself as a nun in the chaste third-movement unaccompanied chant. As at the end of Ravel's "Mother Goose Suite," the music built into a secular spirituality, then tumbled into a hushed finality. | |
| 20th
Century Music, Oct. 23, 1998 by Mark Alburger | ||
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