Facts About Water

EXAMINER
“[Guy Barash] leads the listener through imagined landscapes, constructed of real-world artifacts and memories, altered and transformed in the narrative to expose significance not even ordinarily latent in them, but accessible only in the great mash-up of sound objects. … His String Quartet No. 1 “Wrong Ocean” sounds heavily aleatoric or modular, but is completely and conventionally notated. Frightening, violent effects, simple in isolation, are arranged into complex combinations. Its density of composition and unrelenting visceral menace are reminiscent of George Crumb’s Black Angels. … [A]ll the performers, too numerous to be named individually, displayed such dedication and proficiency, that they seemed extensions of the composer’s will.” [FULL ARTICLE]
—Seth Gilman

JAZZ WEEKLY
“Barash puts together four completely variant pieces of music united … by a love of the adventurous and avant garde. … For the adventurous listener looking for something REALLY new.” [FULL ARTICLE]
—George W. Harris

CLASSICAL-MODERN MUSIC REVIEW
“[T]he combination of various worlds of outness [is] compelling. Texts are as abstracted or extraordinary as the music, yet there is often narrative, Kafkaesque, Beckettian. The music comes at you like a tornado or, perhaps more appropriately since this album has water as a thematic element, like a waterspout dead-ahead. Those devotees of uncompromising new music will find this an absorbing listen. I surely did.” [FULL ARTICLE]
—Greg Edwards

I CARE IF YOU LISTEN
“New York-based composer Guy Barash is a risk-taker, willing to pull ideas from all disciplines as he jumps into the unknown. … [‘Wrong Ocean’] explores water’s potent, destructive force. Thorny melodic lines and unabated dissonance sweeps the listener into a disorienting river of sound, but recurring motives … create unity among the short and turbulent movements. … ‘Blind Huber’, for mixed chamber ensemble, excerpts its text from [Nick] Flynn’s poems about eighteenth-century Swiss naturalist François Huber… This grotesque but delicate setting alternates perspectives between Huber and his hive’s collective mind, each exploring their own natures. … Most striking is the interplay between soprano Jamie Jordan and tenor Eric Dudley. … ‘Seven Testimonies’ is a schizophrenic pastiche, a setting of Flynn’s text adapted from redacted testimonies of Abu Ghraib detainees. … The familiar instrumentation is rendered farcical in its abrupt starts and half-remembered riffs on American patriotic songs, itself a collection of redactions. … [In ‘Proteus,’] Andrew Struck-Marcell’s voice is consistently matter-of-fact, croaking as he reads Flynn’s dark and searching prose poem. The distorted digital processing of his voice flickers and changes with each segment of the text, vocoded pitches appearing and fading like the piece’s metamorphic namesake. The effect is terrifying. … All of the music on Facts About Water skitters with tension, intricate musical phrasing, and a deep understanding and respect for Nick Flynn’s text… [T]he individual pieces are excellently performed and well crafted, and merit repeated listening.” [FULL ARTICLE]
—Jason Charney

WALL STREET JOURNAL
“… the quartet on its own expanded on traditional string sounds, often creating an evocatively rubber smear, in the Israeli composer Guy Barash’s String Quartet No. 1 “Wrong Ocean” (2012), a rhythmically vital evocation of rough waves and tidal forces.” [FULL ARTICLE]
—Allan Kozinn

I CARE IF YOU LISTEN
“Guy Barash‘s Wrong Ocean, a kinetic, ten-movement flurry of wild precision, offered another extreme while exhibiting an analogous standard of discipline and maturity.” [FULL ARTICLE]
—Christian Kriegeskotte