Acclaim
"[Mass for the Endangered's] ethereal choruses and spine-tingling textures, sung brilliantly by the British ensemble Gallicantus, make for challenging but engrossing listening — perfectly fragile music for increasingly fragile circumstances." (Latest/Greatest Releases, October 2020)
"American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider adapts the ancient contemplative template of the Catholic Mass to honor and mourn for a burning planet and its wildlife, weaving the traditional Latin liturgy with original poetry by Nathaniel Bellows. This premiere recording hands the piece to the luminous British choir Gallicantus." ("10 Reasons to Keep Falling for Classical Music")
"A contemporary sensibility pierces an antique haze in Sarah Kirkland Snider’s elaboration of the liturgical text, with a libretto by Nathaniel Bellows. There’s a mournful intensity to the music, performed by vocal ensemble Gallicantus."
"Arresting…shines with multi-layered singing of uncommon beauty…Snider asserts her own musical personality as a composer who knows instinctively how to write for the human voice. Through her smart and resplendent exploration of age-old musical formulas, Snider's eco-inspired 'Mass for the Endangered' is a blast from the past that resonates profoundly in the present.”
"Expressively interpreted by Gallicantus, an English choral ensemble, and captured beautifully in a recording jointly released by New Amsterdam and Nonesuch, ['Mass for the Endangered'] proclaims Snider’s technical command and unerring knack for breathtaking beauty."
“Sarah Kirkland Snider, a rising star on the American compositional scene … describes ['Mass for the Endangered'] as a prayer for endangered wildlife and their imperiled environments. More plea than polemic, the first recording of this riveting work … [is] elegiac and affecting.”
[In Mass for the Endangered], Snider summons from her forces a lustrous wonder... By turns diaphanous and urgent, exultant and wary, the music both immerses us in this perilous era and stirs us to examine our collective conscience… Snider and Bellows’s collaboration is a meeting of questing, unsettled minds.”
"Snider’s Mass is embedded with the mysticism, sonorities, and spaciousness found in church music throughout the ages that imbue it with a sense of timelessness. What’s more, it sounds, feels, and sings like a Mass, resulting in music that is not only beautiful, but fit for liturgical purposes."
"As with Snider’s past works, the surface details of this “Mass” can be quickly identified as mellifluous and engaging. But there are additional levels to enjoy...This emphatic articulation of purpose, sung by and for other humans, seems to be reaching beyond environmentalism and toward morality at large."
"Snider re-works the mass into a requiem for the environment to spectacular effect...This most accessible and very contemporary work (which just might be the first vegan mass) is deeply grounded in earlier traditions and will be of certain interest to lovers of high-quality choral writing." (4.5 Stars, Editor's Choice)
"[Mass for the Endangered] is so sincere and eloquent in its absorption of the great masses of the past by Bach, Palestrina, etc. - and so sheerly gorgeous - that it is undeniably uplifting...sublime counterpoint and expert architecture."
"Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Pale As Centuries is the album’s most striking piece. Its wary guitar theme recedes for Terry Riley-ish upper-register circles, clarinet floating amid piano turbulence and eerie concentric circles just below: it wouldn’t be out of place in the Darcy James Argue catalog."
"I came away with a newly discovered composer to get all enthusiastic about–Sarah Kirkland Snider, whose 'Scenes from Unremembered'...were the most musically compelling songs of the whole show. Angular melodies, chromatic mediant harmonies, overlapping ascending scales, rich rhythmic density arising from Monkishly interlocking ostinati...A Renaissancey minimalism, and quite honestly some of the coolest stuff I’ve heard in a long time.”
“...Sarah Kirkland Snider’s colorful 'Something for the Dark' [is] a sort of concerto for orchestra. Each section enjoyed its moment to shine as the piece cycled through a series of themes and rhythmic variations. It begins with an ethereal high note played by a single violin, and expands into a Mahlerian world of sound and textures.”
"Snider’s nearly 30-minute tone poem 'Hiraeth' was bright and propulsive this night, evoking Twentieth-Century American art music like Samuel Barber and Charles Ives without sounding formal or labored.”
"...Sarah Kirkland Snider’s poignant, deeply personal “Hiraeth,” complemented by a film by Mark DeChiazza, is equally noteworthy..."
“Violinist Yuan-Qing Yu and cellist Kenneth Olsen traced gauzy lines around [Nicholas] Phan’s plaintive, austere vocalism in “Chrysalis,” in which the speaker—in a dream—encounters an unwritten poem in the form of a woman. The results were mesmerizing.”
“For blending four ostensibly mismatched instruments, harp, trombone, viola, and marimba, into a sumptuous quartet filled with luminous clouds of sustained chords and lyrical themes bubbling up to the surface, Sarah Kirkland Snider’s “Shiner” deserves a trophy. Or two."
"With her ability to paint words...in music and convey ideas in sound, Snider creates music that is not only beautiful but intriguing, capturing the spirit of the Swedish mystic [Hilma af Klint] whose paintings could be glimpsed in the adjoining galleries."
“'Something for the Dark'...approaches sound as a vast, malleable substance. In this sophisticated piece, repetition transforms the emotional charge of musical motifs. A turn of phrase may appear pretty at first, then take on shades of nostalgia before registering as a creepy obsession haunting the ear. Ms. Snider skillfully draws a wide arc, with throbbing brass accents and slashing chords driving up tension. The work ends quietly, as if on a question.”
"The gorgeous, haunting song cycle updates Homer's Odyssey from the perspective of its female characters. Snider has been taken to task for writing music that is too vulnerable and too expressive. In "The Lotus Eaters," she answers her critics powerfully with restless music that overflows from an intoxicating desire to forget." (from "The 200 Greatest Songs By 21st Century Women")
“…as a showcase for [Williamson and Snider’s] emerging talents, 'Embrace' makes an exciting impression…Snider’s score is perfectly suited to Williamson’s theme, rooted in classicism but attuned to the modern ear, with its lushly filmic, melodic quality...I hope she will be commissioned for more dance works henceforth.” (Best Ballet Premieres of 2018)
“Sarah Kirkland Snider’s new and undoubtedly American score with its echoes of Bernstein, Copland, and Barber supports the action well. At a time when it seems de rigueur that new music has to be difficult, Snider manages to be challenging without being hard on the ear.”
“'Embrace is a new work by up-and-coming dance-maker, George Williamson, to a tremendous commission from the notable American composer Sarah Kirkland Snider. Snider creates a thrilling sound world, using the many sonorities of a full orchestra and building her music into truly impressive climaxes. It is rich and satisfying, an impressive first dance score from her, making one wish to hear more of her work very soon….superb.”
"…An important representative of 21st century trends in composition…"
“The experimental possibilities for holiday tunes are endless…The recursive structure of “Twelve Days of Christmas,” for instance, is a standing invitation to a modern composer’s reappraisal, like a Sarah Kirkland Snider song cycle or a pointillist symphony that echoes the ideas of Steve Reich.”
"The hauntingly beautiful, evening-length song-cycle titled “The Blue Hour” reflects a whole new level of ambition, care, and capacity…[it] is a rare species in contemporary classical music: a successful group composition."
“Working together, composers Rachel Grimes, Sarah Kirkland Snider, Angélica Negrón, Shara Nova and Caroline Shaw, the Grammy Award-winning singer Luciana Souza and the 18 string players of A Far Cry have come up with a gorgeous and remarkably unified work."
"Dense, layered, large-scale works for voice and instruments, probing the past, are a hallmark of this New Jersey-born composer." (from "The Top 35 Female Composers in Classical Music")
"In early December, we asked Q2 Music listeners to vote on their favorite new-music of the last 20 years." (Unremembered, Top 50)
“['The Currents'] effectively avoids indulging emotion, favoring subtle atmospheric suggestion, true to 19th century impressionism...The piece, however, is not without its surprises... At times tempestuous, at others placid, The Currents is a force of nature—both monsoon and mild breeze.”
"...[Something for the Dark] represents the best of what a commission can yield. It is an imposing achievement marked by Snider’s unique musical language and decisive artistic vision…The charms of Something for the Dark serve a grand structural purpose. Snider persuasively develops a complex music form...a veritable master class in the craft of contemporary music composition."
“In entrancing the listener with the slow dazzle of its intertwining patterns, ['The Currents'] sets the mark high at the outset. There’s a lilting, Debussy-like flow to the material that does, in fact, suggest water movements, especially when the music fluctuates between the rapid motion visible at one stage in a river and the peaceful calm evident elsewhere…"
“…this solo piano piece carries the same flowing lyricism and sensitivity as Snider’s vocal music—but without any of the words. Mizrahi’s fingers swim gracefully through the ebb and flow of the piece, beautifully capturing the depth and breadth of colors that make the currents come to life.”
"The title track [The Currents]...is a real standout. It adroitly covers a wide swath of both emotional and technical terrain. Thus, it is an ideal solo vehicle..."
"Snider takes a lyric cycle by Nathaniel Bellows, chronicling a literally haunted Massachusetts upbringing, and sets it to a luminous, often otherworldly, brilliantly individualistic score."
“Snider excels at capturing the hazy swirl of memories that can haunt an entire lifetime. Her tonal language is often quite sophisticated and harmonically probing, with impressively layered textures of voices and instruments...otherworldly and ear-catching...Snider clearly has a lot to say that’s worth listening to…”
"[Ouroboros, from Epiphany: A Cycle of Life] reflects upon luminosity, music, time, space, life and death, with members of the audience becoming a part of the work and, in the process, connecting with themselves and with the present — the elusive moment of the here and now…Marked by a clear sense of ease and cohesion…energizing yet also soothing and meditative, poetic.
"In a year full of terrific chamber music by up-and-coming composers, Unremembered stands out among its peers. Listeners will still be unpacking its mysteries well into the foreseeable future." (#4, Top Ten Albums of 2015)
Q2 Music's 5th annual new-music countdown has returned! We asked listeners, "What do you consider the greatest works of classical music written in the last 20 years?" (Unremembered, Top 50.)
"'Unremembered' [is] an ambitious Gothic song cycle with a wide range of techniques instrumental, vocal and electronic." (Top Five Albums of 2015)
"[Unremembered is] an austere, moving song cycle about strange goings-on in a Dickinsonian landscape." (#4, Top Ten Albums of 2015.)
“groundbreaking...one of the most acclaimed song cycles of the last decade…What makes “Penelope” so gently devastating is the way Snider precisely captures the mood of McLaughlin’s text: alternately desolate, agitated, or coldly detached. Musical syntax matters less than the complex web of loss, recrimination, and self-understanding evoked.”
"[Unremembered] is Snider’s own brand of New England gothic that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud...multilayered, often angular, and deftly blends ideas from rock and post-minimalist composers…meticulously orchestrated...painterly, intimate...But it is Snider’s fresh, instinctive way with voices that sets her apart from most of her peers.”
“Unremembered is all about exploding genres, bringing Van Dyke Parks into conversation with John Adams, My Brightest Diamond into collision with Edgard Varèse, and art song into contact with concept album.”
“…[Hiraeth] is quite dark, though never grim. She achieves this effect in ways both obvious and subtle: large swaths of minor-key harmonies; well-placed bursts of dissonance or eerie drones that cut against the cheerier melodies; dense orchestral writing that feels heavy, like the humid summer air of her memories; and the overall architecture, which never quite functions how you expect...Overall, Snider’s command of the orchestra is fantastic...engrossing.”
"…One of the decade’s more gifted, up-and-coming modern classical composers."
“...glorious, even luxuriant, with its rich palette of dark and light hues. One could well be reminded of the wonderful tone poems of Richard Strauss. The honored composer was present, appearing on stage to make her well-deserved bows to the exuberant audience.”
“[Unremembered is] haunting, orchestral and poetic…cinematic and atmospheric…”
“Each song [of 'Unremembered'] is its own vividly colored vignette, a mesmerizing narrative brought to life through Snider’s rich textural and temperamental palette…musically she recalls the strict rules and structures of the classical tradition, but she does so in a way that is blurred, broken, and beautifully contorted.”
“The composer Sarah Kirkland Snider is a refreshingly slow worker: She spent four years weaving the richly textured polychrome tapestry of this [Unremembered] recording. Silver threads of medievalish counterpoint twist together with twinkling electronics, faux folk tunes, vintage pop melodies, and avant-garde choral techniques to create an intricately magical landscape.”
“Together, Snider and Bellows have created one of the most significant and harrowing releases of the year, a ravishing fever dream. Hear it once, and Unremembered is unforgettable.”
“...Music of thoughtful inquiry and humane emotion…a heady blend of thoughtful intricacy with forthright emotional appeal…the setting composed for each [song] is rhythmically and tonally distinct, a sequence of craftily detailed tableaux, rich with surprise and nuance.”
"Snider’s lyrical and oft-rapturous music is characterized by immense poise and sophistication…reaffirms Snider’s stature as a modern composer of significant note and accomplishment.”
"Once in a while, Snider exposes the mechanisms that drive the music—as if the listener needed reminding that what she gets up to here is as cerebral as the more emotionally remote music of her concert-hall contemporaries—but she seems less interested in austerity than in generous displays of affect, and deftly tucks the clockwork back in between the score’s orchestral exuberances…"
“…Unremembered is as enthralling in its musical flow as its lyrical narrative, and the way Snider guides, teases, and manipulates the listener is masterful. It’s a stunning, immensely rewarding experience…”
“With Unremembered…the multiplicity of musical languages spoken so deftly highlights the ambiguity of image and the melancholy of both remembering and not — and can be unpacked again and again, still revealing treasures.”
“Composers such as…Sarah Kirkland Snider — names that crop up with increasing frequency in America’s concert programs, opera brochures and record labels — draw with perceptible freedom and lack of anxiety from a wide array of musical sources, without worrying about musical-political correctness or tribal affiliation.”
“In 13 warped and eerie songs, Snider [channels] the ghostly simplicity of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale. [Unremembered] refracts reality just as memory does. From the first stabs of strings and militant drums, “The Witch” throws you in the middle of a hunt...Snider’s forceful orchestra, led by sharp stomps from the cellos, chases Worden, sometimes enveloping her completely.”
“...a glimpse into an entirely new sound world, melding the sneaky bass lines and rhythms of a My Brightest Diamond number with the unsettling orchestral interjections of Thomas Adès and some kind of obliquely driving rock.”
"Snider's style [in "The Swan"] is unapologetically bold and dark, utilizing every musical technique possible to create a precise soundscape – sometimes eerie, sometimes urgent and ominous."
“Based on grisly subject matter, “The Swan” was dark, cinematic, and passionately delivered. “The Witch” was intense, curling, and fierce...If these two selections are any indication, Unremembered is a deeply personal, brave work from Snider.”
“...in listening to people like Sarah Kirkland Snider…my horizons of how I understand classical music as a whole are expanded.”
"Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider is at the forefront of the "post-classical" scene where genre boundaries can't keep her and contemporaries from fertile new artistic ground."
“Based on wistful poetry by Nathaniel Bellows, and augmented with projections of his art and animations, the piece was an involving and moving success on first brush…with depths that urge repeated listening.”
“[Unremembered] attested to Ms. Snider’s thorough command of musical mood setting, organically integrating the structural economy and direct impact of pop songs with deft, subtle orchestrations that lent emotional gravity and nuance.”
“Snider’s “Unremembered,” with text by Nathaniel Bellows, emerged as the night’s highlight...Snider created intricate, color-saturated landscapes that made one want more than one listen to plumb their layers of detail.”
“Snider’s music was at once plainly expressive and rich in nuance, with alluring harmonies, arresting chromatic twists and an abundance of instrumental color. Call “Penelope” what you will (indie post-classical chamber pop drama?), it’s an amazing, beguiling work.”
"Sarah Kirkland Snider’s 'The Orchard' is sensuous and beautiful, and possibly a little darker than it seems at first."
“[yMusic] represented a step up in the quality of both performance and music. I particularly liked Sarah Kirkland Snider’s substantial Daughter of the Waves.”
"The most striking composition on the bill might have been [The Orchard]...In its dark heart, it turned out to be a pensive, folk-tinged art-rock anthem for choir. After a descent into moody ambience, the ensemble let it linger austerely at the end. In its own understated way, it was a showstopper."
"…A potentially significant voice on the American music landscape."
"['Here'] is a sensitive and affective setting of a poem by Nathaniel Bellows—a skillful composition built out of an ostinato and bright diatonic chords.”
"...Snider knows how to expertly play with nostalgia and memory, layering remembrances with contrasting rhythms and lines that collide and divide with an affable ebb and flow.”
“…['Here' featured] winsome melodies and sophisticated harmonies…”
“'Daughter of the Waves' proves to be a compelling exercise in dark liquescence, its initial surface calm disrupted and disturbed by dream-like interjections that border on the hallucinogenic and nightmarish in places...wistful and restless, an imaginative and rewarding new work for classical chamber ensemble.”
“['Daughter of the Waves' is] point-perfect…thoughtful and compelling.”
“yMusic’s rich timbral colour comes especially to the fore during Sarah Kirkland Snider’s evocative “Daughter of the Waves”...Filled with contrasts of mood, Snider’s standout piece exudes a dream-like flow as it moves through its myriad passages, with a late ruminative episode especially powerful.”
“[Penelope] embraces the sort of slow, aching beauty that pours out of Iceland these days: Sigur Rós, Múm, the composers on Valgeir Sigurðsson’s label Bedroom Community. Snider’s songwriting floats though its melody, cycling notes, leading the ear forward without adhering to the relentless A-B-A forms that can clobber similarly gorgeous pop songs.”
"Sarah Kirkland Snider has been on the classical circuit for years, but her breakthrough came with last year’s arresting Penelope...haunting and epic." (from "Ten Young Female Composers You Should Know.")
"Thread and Fray [is] a tautly constructed and poignant work, interweaving short motives with a sensitive intimacy...I was left wanting to know more about her and her music."
"Snider’s music lives in…an increasingly populous inter-genre space that, as of yet, has produced only a few clear, confident voices. Snider is perhaps the most sophisticated of them all."
“Penelope is a gorgeous piece of music, but it is more — it is also a hauntingly vivid psychological portrait, one that explores a dark scenario with a light, almost quizzical touch, finding poetic resonances everywhere… No matter what perspective you bring to this album, it bears profound rewards.”
"With the absurd distinction between serious and non-serious musics largely eradicated, it’s time to take stock of some of the best alternative art songs of 2001-2010 [including "The Lotus Eaters"] (The Top Ten Alternative Art Songs of 2001-2010)
“A potent melding of classical poise and alt-pop punch, this dreamy song cycle [Penelope] was the year’s most affecting creation.” (Best of 2010 Classical Albums)
“Penelope is not just essential listening; it is a soul-restoring musical balm.”
“In the last decade or so, a new breed of conservatory-trained musicians has reinvented crossover in unprecedented ways, fusing classical tradition with hip-hop, indie rock and world music and providing new, exciting audience bridges among these forms at the same time. A good example is New York composer Sarah Kirkland Snider’s song cycle “Penelope”, with a score that combines strings and harp with drums, guitars and electronics.”
Snider has taken a fascinating idea from playwright Ellen McLaughlin and turned it into a song cycle that works on several levels...Penelope deals with big ideas -- memory, identity, "home" -- but it's also an intimate portrait of a woman who, like Homer's Penelope, is confronted with finally getting what she's wished for. (from "The Best Five Genre-Defying Albums of 2010")
“...alternately melancholic, agitated and poignant… the musical offspring of Britten’s Sea Interludes and Eno’s Music for Airports…[serving] to confirm Snider’s deft command of many different musical languages.”
“Snider’s score is the very model of smart, contemporary “music savant”—”knowing music” engaged with the “classical” tradition but unafraid to trot out the tools of “popular” music to suit its purposes… Penelope is, for me, the finest, most indispensable and potentially lasting new work I have heard or am likely to hear this year.”
“…The journey through Penelope—achingly stark, sparse, swaying, and soaring—begs repeated listening with an attentive ear. The way hints of Radiohead and David Lang materialize and mingle with St. Vincent and Chopin only to be reabsorbed into an aural landscape that is uniquely—ineffably—the voice of Sarah Kirkland Snider, results in what is easily the most beautiful album of the year.”
“Penelope is such an accomplished and remarkable work, it’s hard to believe that it could possibly be [Snider’s] debut album… This year or any year for that matter, one would be hard pressed to hear melodies that are more gorgeous and soul-stirring… Material so powerful places Penelope head and shoulders above much else that was released in 2010.”
