FROM COLLEAGUES:
"Bruce Wolosoff's music is beautiful, very musical, independent-minded stylistically, and comes from a very warm and terrific person."
WILLIAM BOLCOM
"Bruce Wolosoff writes music with beauty and deep feeling; music that engages the listener and is fresh and relevant."
LOWELL LIEBERMANN
"Bruce is a wonderful, thoughtful composer who not only combines popular musical idioms successfully with classical concert music, but also brings together the spontaneity and freshness of improvisation within the scope of formally conceived, fully notated music. Walking this tightrope between the free and the controlled, his music is always vital, engaging and compelling."
SEBASTIAN CURRIER
"Wonderful pieces. I love them all!"
LUKAS FOSS
"There are composers who play the piano, and there are pianists who compose music.
Bruce Wolosoff is that rare individual who is actually good at both."
JOAN TOWER
"Bruce Wolosoff's playing is beautiful and dynamic. His musicianship is so broad-minded and of such a high calibre, that when I associate with him I feel like I am with one of the legendary pianists from out of history, you know, like Chopin and Liszt hanging out."
JAKI BYARD
FROM THE PRESS:
CELLO SONATAS
Bruce Wolosoff is a formidable pianist and composer who delights in blurring genre boundaries." GRAMOPHONE, July '22. To read full Gramophone review, click here
CELLO CONCERTO
"It’s exceedingly rare to encounter a major new work by a living composer which, without widespread exposure over an extended period of time, can be declared an instant masterpiece, but in my opinion, American composer Bruce Wolosoff (b. New York City, 1955) has pulled off that coup.
There will be those critics, no doubt, who will tsk-tsk Wolosoff for writing a work that is filled with real melody, rhythmic drive, urgent drama, and sweeping orchestral vistas. In other words, Wolosoff has composed a concerto in the true Romantic tradition, and it’s of such compelling beauty that it doesn’t take more than one listening to fall in love with it.
If I’m guilty of hyperbole, so be it, but I honestly believe that in the history of great cello concertos—and really, how many of those are there?—Wolosoff’s joins them as one of the truly great ones.
Urgently recommended.” Jerry Dubins, FANFARE
A LIGHT IN THE DARK
“Kudos to Bruce Wolosoff's original score, a roaming, melodic tone poem of Americana”
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
“The lush score by Bruce Wolosoff was evocative. “A Light in the Dark” has the hallmarks of an instant classic.”
CHICAGO STAGE STANDARD
Bruce Wolosoff’s original score lends a once-upon-a-time melodic backdrop that evokes the gentility of late 19th-century society in the American South, yet supports the characters’ contrasting motifs with contemporary phrasing.
DANCE MAGAZINE
“Wolosoff’s eloquent melodies are refreshingly direct.”
FANFARE
"Masterful"
DANCE MAGAZINE
"Powerful . . . A feast for the senses . . . A work of tremendous empathy"
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
SONGS WITHOUT WORDS
"Wolosoff’s perfectly formed miniatures demonstrate myriad influences."
It was perhaps inevitable that Bruce Wolosoff would compose “Songs Without Words”, which is subtitled “18 Divertimenti for String Quartet”. The New York born composer grew up playing in an assortment of bands whose stylistic bents would become essential components in his creative voice.
In “Songs Without Words” . . . Wolosoff takes those styles and runs blissfully with them, charging through jazz, rock, blues, and many other musical genres with what one might easily call unbridled glee.
These are not simulations of traditional tunes arranged for the unlikely ensemble of string quartet. They are beautifully crafted miniatures, each gazing back at an iconic style or artist, while taking inventive delight in the myriad colors and interactions that have long made this combination of stringed instruments so singular."
GRAMOPHONE
"Songs without Words was commissioned from Bruce Wolosoff by the Carpe Diem Quartet.Numbering some 18 short pieces, almost all around the length of an old-fashioned pop single- three minutes- this is an enjoyable, flexible set of little diversions and vignettes.
Wolosoff is continually inventive, mining a wide variety of genres and letting them go before they overstay their welcome . . .The "Songs Without Words" satisfy in just the same way that a well-crafted song, whether by Robert Schumann or Brian Wilson, does."
"Wolosoff’s variations are immensely enjoyable, unpretentious, and finely crafted, with a wonderfully broad range of expression."
MUSICAL AMERICA
"The spirit and style is, for the most part, very American … There are many flavors- from Gershwin, to rowdy Texan hoopla, to bluegrass, to pop rock. There are slowly swaying Celtic pastorals, round dances with the fiddle, energetic blues with a hard rhythmic bounce, wild hoedown, nervous pizzicati, and liquid ballads. Late Beethoven and Stephane Grappelli come to shake hands in Gershwin’s salon.
. . . The last track is one of the best- fragile and loaded with feeling, it reaches the heart-aching depths of Piazolla’s Milongas."
MUSIC WEB INTERNATIONAL
Critic's Choice: Classical CD's
"Wolosoff produced an engaging and, dare I say, literate piece that does what classical music is supposed to do: give a more formal voice to the music of its day. And it’s a very fun disc to listen to. It’s at the top of my own gift-giving list."
METROLAND ONLINE
MANY WORLDS
Composer Bruce Wolosoff doesn’t limit himself to any one mode of expression: jazz, rock, boogie- woogie, or classical (whatever that is in our day) find their way into the music as the spirit moves him. On his CD, Many Worlds, he explores the blues, jazz, and American folk song, in appealing pieces that sometimes startle but always satisfy.
Dreamy, lyrical episodes alternate with exuberant affirmations, complex, linear figures test the pianist’s dexterity, and subtly staggered rhythms add an infectious joie de vivre . . . This exuberance recalled the traditional New Orleans jazz band funeral, in which the playing is slow and dignified on the way to the cemetery but boisterously alive on the return.
GHOST DANCES
“Bruce Wolosoff’s “ghost dances” are a great discovery. The five energetic movements create entire worlds unto themselves...The piano etudes by Ligeti seem like the obvious model for this sort of writing, with Messiaen's kaleidoscope of color and Bartok's jagged rhythms thrown into the mix. It all came out splendidly, and for it Logan received the heartiest applause."
THE WASHINGTON POST
THE SECRET FIRE
“Bruce Wolosoff is a composer worth watching-or even better,
worth listening to”
THE INDIANAPOLIS NEWS
“lush melodies that never ran in predictable grooves”
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
THE PASSIONS
“The Passions’ is a driving pulsing original score.”
THE DULUTH NEWS-TRIBUNE
BODHISATTVA
“Drawing on both the starkness of Beethoven’s late-quartet style and the sorrowful language of the blues, this is a moving, well-crafted piece that offers accessibility without being simple-minded.”
THE WASHINGTON POST (”Consorting with Greatness”)
BLUES FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
"Bruce Wolosoff’s contribution, a trio for violin, clarinet and piano called "blues for the new millennium” really does sound and feel like a turning point. Opening with bits and pieces of thematic material tossed around in familiarly idiomatic contemporary ease, the bits begin to take on blues sounds, the piano moves into boogie
patterns and the music seems to morph back and forth between classical contemporary and blues personalities.”
THE WASHINGTON POST
LOOKING FOR THE MOON IN THE SEA
“the music was always lovely to hear”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"unashamedly Romantic and exquisite"
MUSIC CONNOISSEUR MAGAZINE
AS PIANIST:
"A great pianist . . . who has something to say!"
REPERTOIRE, PARIS
"Mr. Wolosoff is an artist with ideas. He combines keen musical insight with a prismatic sense of tonal color."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
"Wolosoff was literally all over the piano in this tremendously difficult piece. He seemed to understand it well, had the technique to conquer it, and completely communicated its feeling."
THE DENVER POST
"Through the careful use of every gradation of touch and both pedals he brought forth a luminous Beethoven performance. If it was not the most standard reading of the piece, neither was it gratuitously quirky nor a rehashing of someone else's ideas. This was a well though-out point of view presented with clarity."
THE NEWARK STAR-LEDGER
"All those who love Busoni's work owe it to themselves to hear Bruce Wolosoff's compelling and beautiful interpretations. They are exemplary."
HANNAH BUSONI
"The evening closed with a subtly poetic and beautifully shaded transversal of Debussy's Preludes, Book One. Too many pianists-- eyes cast heavenward and damper pedal locked into position-- turn these enigmatic pastels into sonic mush: Mr. Wolosoff's clean unsentimental performances were refreshing."
THE NEW YORK TIMES