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PostClassical Ensemble's sophisticated Ellington

The Georgertowner
By
Richard Selden
Published on
April 29, 2024
In reference to:
Beyond Category: The Concert Music of Duke Ellington

"...showed how well Ellington’s music can be translated for performance by a chamber orchestra, at least one as carefully assembled and conducted as PostClassical."

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PostClassical Ensemble opens the new year with 'Amazing Grace'

The Washington Post
By
Michael Brodeur
Published on
January 11, 2024
In reference to:

"Another Walker work, “Lyric for Strings,” offered the strings of the PCE a chance to shine. Gil-Ordoñez — one of my favorite conductors in town to watch — achieved breathtaking delicacy and clarity from the violins, and a tactile grit from the cellos and bass."

"a tradition worth repeating"

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PostClassical Ensemble Surveys Architecture

The Georgetowner
By
Richard Selden
Published on
November 30, 2023
In reference to:
Bouncing Off The Walls: Music and Architecture

This unconventional musical program played by a chamber orchestra that — thanks to its conductor’s sensitivity and the excellence of its member instrumentalists — is unsurpassed.

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Music and Architecture Converse

DC Theater Arts
By
Susan Galbraith
Published on
November 18, 2023
In reference to:
Bouncing Off The Walls: Music and Architecture

A bold, eccentric program at Kennedy Center brings together two art forms and discovers new ideas about concepts they share.

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PostClassical Ensemble Fills Stage With Falla

The Georgetowner
By
Richard Selden
Published on
May 1, 2023
In reference to:
Entwined

The occasion for PostClassical Ensemble to devote an evening to Falla was the centennial of “El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show).” This one-act chamber opera was the second half of an April 19 double-bill that both entertained and enlightened a sold-out audience in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.  

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Falla and Lorca resume their friendship in Washington to break down stereotypes about Spain

El País
By
Iker Seisdedos
Published on
April 22, 2023
In reference to:
Entwined

A play on the relationship between the composer and the poet and a recreation by director Ángel Gil-Ordóñez of 'El retablo de Maese Pedro' commemorated in the US capital the centenary of the musical piece inspired by 'Don Quixote'. (English translation)

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From PostClassical Ensemble, a wildly bold ‘Entwined: A Double Feature’

DC Theater Arts
By
Susan Galbraith
Published on
April 21, 2023
In reference to:
Entwined

Wednesday night, I was at the John F. Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theater to review the debut presentation of a wildly bold experiment headed up by the eclectic and accomplished PostClassical Ensemble in an orchestral program, Entwined: A Double Feature. As an audience member, you could enter this evening’s alchemic collaboration through any of the parts represented, but, taken as a whole, it proved a dazzling feast.

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Best of classical music in 2022

The Washington Post
By
Michael Andor Brodeur
Published on
December 15, 2022
In reference to:
Mahler's Fourth: A Wicked New Look

One of the most unique — which is a gentle way of saying deeply weird — evenings of the year was the PostClassical Ensemble’s “A Wicked New Look,” which presented a captivating concert at the Kennedy Center of miniaturized Mahler favorites custom-cut to accommodate the lowing, glowing bass trombone of classical experimentalist David Taylor. Under conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez, the ensemble wryly turned the composer’s natural and psychological landscapes inside out, with Taylor’s trombone lending the music something between sonic slapstick and brute pathos.

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A master class in French surrealism from the PostClassical Ensemble

The Washington Post
By
Michael Andor Brodeur
Published on
November 10, 2022
In reference to:
Paris at Midnight

On Wednesday night at the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre, the PostClassical Ensemble led a quick and beguiling expedition 100 years into the past and about 4,000 miles to the east. On paper, “Paris at Midnight: Jazz and Surrealism in the 1920s” sounded like something lifted from my undergrad course load; in practice, this immersive history lesson felt like a model for how classical music — and the other sounds that swirl around it — can be engagingly presented.

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PostClassical Ensemble gives Mahler’s 4th symphony ‘A Wicked New Look’

The Washington Post
By
Michael Andor Brodeur
Published on
April 21, 2022
In reference to:
Mahler's Fourth: A Wicked New Look

But Gil-Ordóñez worked hard to froth the ensemble up around Taylor’s unruly column of sound. He put fat on the bones of the movement’s various melodies, letting them buckle under their unaccustomed weight. Mourning shudders rattled key lines as the ensemble struggled (often beautifully!) to empathize. Toward the end of the movement, Taylor loped to the rear of the stage, taking his ground-scraping lows with him in a slow, subdued huff. He eventually sidled offstage through a side door, still playing, and a contagious chuckle across the hall closed the movement.

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At ‘Hope in the Night,’ PostClassical Ensemble gives a Black composer an overdue spotlight

The Washington Post
By
Michael Andor Brodeur
Published on
March 24, 2022
In reference to:
Hope in the Night

From start to finish, PostClassical proved itself an orchestra in fighting shape, with compelling storytellers across its ranks. Not least of all Gil-Ordóñez, who lent the “Work Song” a living, breathing vitality, with the heft and permanence of a monument you regularly pass but only just noticed.

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