Press Reviews

(Selected press quotes below.  For full reviews and feature articles, please visit artist's Digital Press Kit.)

What the Critics Say…

About COMPOSITIONS by PAUL DRESHER

“Paul Dresher’s haunting score for string quartet is the most rewarding element of the new stage adaptation of the book at Berkeley Repertory Theater. By turns mournful, anxious and serene, and composed with an elegance that echoes the lapidary beauty of Woolf’s writing…”
-Charles Isherwood, NY Times, March 3, 2007

"But the most striking portion of the show is the musical second act, which is performed, for the most part without words, only Dresher's music to advance the story and mark the passage of time. Here, too, all of the multimedia elements are put into play to create not only an evocative piece of storytelling, but a unique piece of art."
-Pat Craig, Contra Costa Times, March 1, 2007, review on ‘To the Lighthouse’ performed at the Berkeley Rep

“Holding it all together is Paul Dresher’s excellent score [Snow in June], ably performed by the local group Andromeda. Dresher is every bit as eclectic as Shi-Zeng. You can hear Flatt & Scruggs, Astor Piazzolla, Talking Heads, and Asian music, but Dresher is putting things together rather than throwing them in the air. His music not only takes the story forward, it maintains a satiric but serious sensibility from one song to another. And Qian Yi’s forceful solo finale, the only song in Chinese, casts just the right spell.”
-Ed Siegel, Boston Globe

“He [Dresher] has created a fresh, inventive, exciting, hip and immediately appealing yet carefully composed, thoroughly thought-out and seemingly spontaneous music that shows musical boundaries to be as artificial as the Berlin Wall.”
-Mark Swed, L.A. Weekly

“…Dresher’s This Same Temple and Adam’s Phrygian Gates, both played in Paris, were two of the most impressive works heard at the three concerts the Reich Music Foundation put on at the Guggenheim Museum last year.”
-Andrew Porter, The New Yorker

“The standout work was Paul Dresher’s Double Ikat, a substantial, inventive and satisfying post-minimal construct. Its roots are in pure pulse power, but it blossoms in lyric fantasies, ranging from the sentimental to the swinging, and ends in a marvelously centered, introspective quasi-raga. Delightfully varied in texture, mood and paces…chamber music tour de force…”
-John Henken, Los Angeles Times

“The sheer variety of sound that Dresher achieves is impressive…music ranges from a delicately layered chamber work throbbing contrapuntal textures that hit with the crash of high voltage rock.”
-Annalyn Swan, Newsweek

“The third Los Angeles premiere on this agenda was Paul Dresher’s First Quartet, subtitled Casa Vecchia…This is captivating music…It has concept, construct and conviction, and in the Kronos’ performance it had excitement.”
-Daniel Cariaga, Los Angeles Times

“Dresher…tellingly draws on our shared musical culture…writing music of uniquely American clarity and expressivity. For example the electric guitar solo Dark Blue Circumstance partakes frankly of classic 60s folk-rock style…but with layering that reflects Dresher’s study of gamelan, and a thoughtful consideration of large-scale form that is rare in this sort of music. It’s achingly tender, but intriguingly constructed. It shows both more care and more inspiration than similar works…A delightful musical mind. No, that’s not quite right-there are many busy and interesting musical minds out there. It’s more accurate to call Dresher a beautiful music spirit.”
-Scott Wheeler, Fanfare