“Each soloist was asked follow the score but to play the piece bringing as much personal style as they wish, stretching the boundaries between classical and jazz styles. This is Iverson’s principle aim, to create new and exciting music at the boundaries between the two styles.. … The result is a wonderful CD featuring six sonatas each for a different instrument and, of course, six different soloists. Iverson composed all pieces and plays piano on all but one of the tracks.”
— Ken Talbot, MusicWeb International (full review here)
“To my delighted ear, his opening movement’s pianism works as a burr under the saddle of the high-riding, mellifluous riffs in the clarinet. I’ve been singing some of the motifs ever since.”
— Seth Colter Walls, The New York Times (full review here)
“[Roz Chast’s d]elightful art, informative booklet, and rewarding music that brings a dash of jazz seasoning to chamber music make Playfair Sonatas an irresistible release for music lovers of the jazz and classical persuasions alike.”
— Karl Nehring, Classical Candor (full review here)
“Playfair Sonatas is emotionally rich and direct, saturated in whimsy and melody. (Perhaps due to the blend of playfulness and melancholy, perhaps due to the anthology-like nature of these six musical short stories, or perhaps due to the album artwork from New Yorker veteran Roz Chast, the album bears a strange spiritual resemblance to Wes Anderson’s terrific movie The French Dispatch.)”
— Josh Hurst, The Hurst Review (full review here)
“The album cover makes you think this will be a playful album. And I suppose on some levels it is. But it’s also a solidly written, produced and performed addition to the contemporary classical music canon – one filled with plenty of references to legendary jazz musicians…Playfair Sonatas is an album I will return to over and over again.”
— Craig L. Byrd, Cultural Attaché (full review here)
“Ethan Iverson is one of the foremost jazz pianists of his generation….Technically Acceptable and Playfair Sonatas are significant recordings in Iverson’s catalog, the former demonstrating his finesse as a writer of jazz originals and the latter combining a cornucopia of traditions into eminently successful notated works. One hopes that both approaches remain part of his prolific creativity. Two favorite recordings from 2024.”
— Christian Carey, Sequenza 21 (full review here)
“Iverson’s activities have long straddled the divide between the classical and jazz worlds, and he’s clearly at home in both types of music…these are pieces that gleefully go their own ways.”
— Jonathan Blumhofer, The Arts Fuse (full review here)
“Since leaving The Bad Plus, pianist and composer Ethan Iverson has produced a wide ranging, creative and eclectic catalogue. His latest release has him in the classical world of sonatas…the music is delivered with respect, wonder and serenity. The Good Plus.”
João Marcos Coelho, Cultura Brasil (full review here)
A full list of streaming/download/CD purchase links can be found here.
“I have had the privilege and pleasure of working with Miranda Cuckson for over a decade, and take particular pride in her recordings for Urlicht AudioVisual. With the resurgence of the LP format, it is high time to showcase her exceptional insight and talent on vinyl.” – Gene Gaudette
The other side features two pivotal postwar works for solo violin: Iannis Xenakis‘s “Mikka S“, a breakthrough work with microtonal glissandi and dynamic voicings that places it among the most challenging in the violin repertoire, and Franco Donatoni‘s “Argot“, a work drawing on minimalism and late-20th-century European avant-garde styles, with moods that are at once playful and intense.
Shortly after our joint performances of the Kodály Duo in Sofia and in Varna, I was able to leave Bulgaria in a daring escape, made possible by an administrative mistake. The communist passport officials erroneously had granted me exit documents for traveling to Germany, but despite quickly realizing their mistake and attempting to call me back to their office, they were just a bit late in their timing, and I managed to slip out of the country. From Germany I easily made it to America, where I had been invited to teach at Indiana University, as one of Josef Gingold’s assistants. ”
